Reference attribute query processing for a multi-tenant cloud service

ABSTRACT

A system performs reference attribute query processing in a multi-tenant cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) system by: receiving a request from a client of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, where the request indicates one or more reference attributes associated with a resource that is persisted in a database of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, and the request indicates one or more filter conditions configured to be applied on the one or more reference attributes; building a query based on the one or more reference attributes and the one or more filter conditions; retrieving resource data by executing the query on a database of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, where the retrieved resource data is associated with the one or more reference attributes and satisfies the one or more filter conditions; and returning the retrieved data to the client of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. ProvisionalApplication Ser. No. 62/563,796, filed Sep. 27, 2017, and U.S.Provisional Application Ser. No. 62/563,842, filed Sep. 27, 2017, bothbeing incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

FIELD

One embodiment is directed generally to identity and access management,and in particular, to identity and access management in a cloud system.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Generally, the use of cloud-based applications (e.g., enterprise publiccloud applications, third-party cloud applications, etc.) is soaring,with access coming from a variety of devices (e.g., desktop and mobiledevices) and a variety of users (e.g., employees, partners, customers,etc.). The abundant diversity and accessibility of cloud-basedapplications has led identity management and access security to become acentral concern. Typical security concerns in a cloud environment areunauthorized access, account hijacking, malicious insiders, etc.Accordingly, there is a need for secure access to cloud-basedapplications, or applications located anywhere, regardless of from whatdevice type or by what user type the applications are accessed.

SUMMARY

A system performs reference attribute query processing in a multi-tenantcloud-based identity and access management (IAM) system by: receiving arequest from a client of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherethe request indicates one or more reference attributes associated with aresource that is persisted in a database of the multi-tenant cloud-basedIAM system, and the request indicates one or more filter conditionsconfigured to be applied on the one or more reference attributes;building a query based on the one or more reference attributes and theone or more filter conditions; retrieving resource data by executing thequery on a database of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherethe retrieved resource data is associated with the one or more referenceattributes and satisfies the one or more filter conditions; andreturning the retrieved data to the client of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIGS. 1-5 are block diagrams of example embodiments that providecloud-based identity management.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram providing a system view of an embodiment.

FIG. 6A is a block diagram providing a functional view of an embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an embodiment that implements Cloud Gate.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example system that implements multiple tenanciesin one embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a network view of an embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of a system architecture view of single signon (“SSO”) functionality in one embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a message sequence flow of SSO functionality in oneembodiment.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of a distributed data grid in oneembodiment.

FIG. 13 is an example block diagram of relationships between resourcesin an embodiment.

FIG. 14 is an example structural view of an in-memory object thatdefines/stores several object attributes and their relationships,according to an embodiment.

FIG. 15 is an example block diagram of a two-pass mechanism for buildingthe references between objects in the server initialization phase,according to an embodiment.

FIG. 16 is an example schematic hierarchical diagram of differentreference query types according to an embodiment.

FIG. 17 is an example schematic diagram of a five-stage filter referencequery builder/processor, according to an embodiment.

FIG. 18 is an example block diagram of classes in the expression builderof FIG. 17, according to an embodiment.

FIGS. 19A and 19B are flow diagrams of functionality for defining andusing reference attributes and for reference attribute query processingin accordance with embodiments.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Embodiments define and use a novel schema for storing objects that havereferences to other objects. Embodiments extend the System forCross-domain Identity Management (“SCIM”) Internet Engineering TaskForce (“IETF”), Request for Comments (“RFC”) 7643 to store suchobjects/resources for any level of references between objects and anytype of resources. Further, embodiments optimally query resources thatreference other resources. In embodiments, the query is determined atrun-time based on the requested resource types and their referencerelationships. Embodiments extend the SCIM filter functionality toaddress such referenced resources.

Embodiments provide an identity cloud service that implements amicroservices based architecture and provides multi-tenant identity anddata security management and secure access to cloud-based applications.Embodiments support secure access for hybrid cloud deployments (i.e.,cloud deployments which include a combination of a public cloud and aprivate cloud). Embodiments protect applications and data both in thecloud and on-premise. Embodiments support multi-channel access via web,mobile, and application programming interfaces (“APIs”). Embodimentsmanage access for different users, such as customers, partners, andemployees. Embodiments manage, control, and audit access across thecloud as well as on-premise. Embodiments integrate with new and existingapplications and identities. Embodiments are horizontally scalable.

One embodiment is a system that implements a number of microservices ina stateless middle tier environment to provide cloud-based multi-tenantidentity and access management services. In one embodiment, eachrequested identity management service is broken into real-time andnear-real-time tasks. The real-time tasks are handled by a microservicein the middle tier, while the near-real-time tasks are offloaded to amessage queue. Embodiments implement access tokens that are consumed bya routing tier and a middle tier to enforce a security model foraccessing the microservices. Accordingly, embodiments provide acloud-scale Identity and Access Management (“IAM”) platform based on amulti-tenant, microservices architecture.

One embodiment provides an identity cloud service that enablesorganizations to rapidly develop fast, reliable, and secure services fortheir new business initiatives. In one embodiment, the identity cloudservice provides a number of core services, each of which solving aunique challenge faced by many enterprises. In one embodiment, theidentity cloud service supports administrators in, for example, initialon-boarding/importing of users, importing groups with user members,creating/updating/disabling/enabling/deleting users,assigning/un-assigning users into/from groups,creating/updating/deleting groups, resetting passwords, managingpolicies, sending activation, etc. The identity cloud service alsosupports end users in, for example, modifying profiles, settingprimary/recovery emails, verifying emails, unlocking their accounts,changing passwords, recovering passwords in case of forgotten password,etc.

Unified Security of Access

One embodiment protects applications and data in a cloud environment aswell as in an on-premise environment. The embodiment secures access toany application from any device by anyone. The embodiment providesprotection across both environments since inconsistencies in securitybetween the two environments may result in higher risks. For example,such inconsistencies may cause a sales person to continue having accessto their Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) account even afterthey have defected to the competition. Accordingly, embodiments extendthe security controls provisioned in the on-premise environment into thecloud environment. For example, if a person leaves a company,embodiments ensure that their accounts are disabled both on-premise andin the cloud.

Generally, users may access applications and/or data through manydifferent channels such as web browsers, desktops, mobile phones,tablets, smart watches, other wearables, etc. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides secured access across all these channels. Forexample, a user may use their mobile phone to complete a transactionthey started on their desktop.

One embodiment further manages access for various users such ascustomers, partners, employees, etc. Generally, applications and/or datamay be accessed not just by employees but by customers or third parties.Although many known systems take security measures when onboardingemployees, they generally do not take the same level of securitymeasures when giving access to customers, third parties, partners, etc.,resulting in the possibility of security breaches by parties that arenot properly managed. However, embodiments ensure that sufficientsecurity measures are provided for access of each type of user and notjust employees.

Identity Cloud Service

Embodiments provide an Identity Cloud Service (“IDCS”) that is amulti-tenant, cloud-scale, IAM platform. IDCS provides authentication,authorization, auditing, and federation. IDCS manages access to customapplications and services running on the public cloud, and on-premisesystems. In an alternative or additional embodiment, IDCS may alsomanage access to public cloud services. For example, IDCS can be used toprovide Single Sign On (“SSO”) functionality across such variety ofservices/applications/systems.

Embodiments are based on a multi-tenant, microservices architecture fordesigning, building, and delivering cloud-scale software services.Multi-tenancy refers to having one physical implementation of a servicesecurely supporting multiple customers buying that service. A service isa software functionality or a set of software functionalities (such asthe retrieval of specified information or the execution of a set ofoperations) that can be reused by different clients for differentpurposes, together with the policies that control its usage (e.g., basedon the identity of the client requesting the service). In oneembodiment, a service is a mechanism to enable access to one or morecapabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interfaceand is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specifiedby the service description.

In one embodiment, a microservice is an independently deployableservice. In one embodiment, the term microservice contemplates asoftware architecture design pattern in which complex applications arecomposed of small, independent processes communicating with each otherusing language-agnostic APIs. In one embodiment, microservices aresmall, highly decoupled services and each may focus on doing a smalltask. In one embodiment, the microservice architectural style is anapproach to developing a single application as a suite of smallservices, each running in its own process and communicating withlightweight mechanisms (e.g., an HTTP resource API). In one embodiment,microservices are easier to replace relative to a monolithic servicethat performs all or many of the same functions. Moreover, each of themicroservices may be updated without adversely affecting the othermicroservices. In contrast, updates to one portion of a monolithicservice may undesirably or unintentionally negatively affect the otherportions of the monolithic service. In one embodiment, microservices maybe beneficially organized around their capabilities. In one embodiment,the startup time for each of a collection of microservices is much lessthan the startup time for a single application that collectivelyperforms all the services of those microservices. In some embodiments,the startup time for each of such microservices is about one second orless, while the startup time of such single application may be about aminute, several minutes, or longer.

In one embodiment, microservices architecture refers to a specialization(i.e., separation of tasks within a system) and implementation approachfor service oriented architectures (“SOAs”) to build flexible,independently deployable software systems. Services in a microservicesarchitecture are processes that communicate with each other over anetwork in order to fulfill a goal. In one embodiment, these servicesuse technology-agnostic protocols. In one embodiment, the services havea small granularity and use lightweight protocols. In one embodiment,the services are independently deployable. By distributingfunctionalities of a system into different small services, the cohesionof the system is enhanced and the coupling of the system is decreased.This makes it easier to change the system and add functions andqualities to the system at any time. It also allows the architecture ofan individual service to emerge through continuous refactoring, andhence reduces the need for a big up-front design and allows forreleasing software early and continuously.

In one embodiment, in the microservices architecture, an application isdeveloped as a collection of services, and each service runs arespective process and uses a lightweight protocol to communicate (e.g.,a unique API for each microservice). In the microservices architecture,decomposition of a software into individual services/capabilities can beperformed at different levels of granularity depending on the service tobe provided. A service is a runtime component/process. Each microserviceis a self-contained module that can talk to other modules/microservices.Each microservice has an unnamed universal port that can be contacted byothers. In one embodiment, the unnamed universal port of a microserviceis a standard communication channel that the microservice exposes byconvention (e.g., as a conventional Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”)port) and that allows any other module/microservice within the sameservice to talk to it. A microservice or any other self-containedfunctional module can be generically referred to as a “service”.

Embodiments provide multi-tenant identity management services.Embodiments are based on open standards to ensure ease of integrationwith various applications, delivering IAM capabilities throughstandards-based services.

Embodiments manage the lifecycle of user identities which entails thedetermination and enforcement of what an identity can access, who can begiven such access, who can manage such access, etc. Embodiments run theidentity management workload in the cloud and support securityfunctionality for applications that are not necessarily in the cloud.The identity management services provided by the embodiments may bepurchased from the cloud. For example, an enterprise may purchase suchservices from the cloud to manage their employees' access to theirapplications.

Embodiments provide system security, massive scalability, end userusability, and application interoperability. Embodiments address thegrowth of the cloud and the use of identity services by customers. Themicroservices based foundation addresses horizontal scalabilityrequirements, while careful orchestration of the services addresses thefunctional requirements. Achieving both goals requires decomposition(wherever possible) of the business logic to achieve statelessness witheventual consistency, while much of the operational logic not subject toreal-time processing is shifted to near-real-time by offloading to ahighly scalable asynchronous event management system with guaranteeddelivery and processing. Embodiments are fully multi-tenant from the webtier to the data tier in order to realize cost efficiencies and ease ofsystem administration.

Embodiments are based on industry standards (e.g., Open ID Connect,OAuth2, Security Assertion Markup Language 2 (“SAML2”), System forCross-domain Identity Management (“SCIM”), Representational StateTransfer (“REST”), etc.) for ease of integration with variousapplications. One embodiment provides a cloud-scale API platform andimplements horizontally scalable microservices for elastic scalability.The embodiment leverages cloud principles and provides a multi-tenantarchitecture with per-tenant data separation. The embodiment furtherprovides per-tenant customization via tenant self-service. Theembodiment is available via APIs for on-demand integration with otheridentity services, and provides continuous feature release.

One embodiment provides interoperability and leverages investments inidentity management (“IDM”) functionality in the cloud and on-premise.The embodiment provides automated identity synchronization fromon-premise Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (“LDAP”) data to clouddata and vice versa. The embodiment provides a SCIM identity bus betweenthe cloud and the enterprise, and allows for different options forhybrid cloud deployments (e.g., identity federation and/orsynchronization, SSO agents, user provisioning connectors, etc.).

Accordingly, one embodiment is a system that implements a number ofmicroservices in a stateless middle tier to provide cloud-basedmulti-tenant identity and access management services. In one embodiment,each requested identity management service is broken into real-time andnear-real-time tasks. The real-time tasks are handled by a microservicein the middle tier, while the near-real-time tasks are offloaded to amessage queue. Embodiments implement tokens that are consumed by arouting tier to enforce a security model for accessing themicroservices. Accordingly, embodiments provide a cloud-scale IAMplatform based on a multi-tenant, microservices architecture.

Generally, known systems provide siloed access to applications providedby different environments, e.g., enterprise cloud applications, partnercloud applications, third-party cloud applications, and customerapplications. Such siloed access may require multiple passwords,different password policies, different account provisioning andde-provisioning schemes, disparate audit, etc. However, one embodimentimplements IDCS to provide unified IAM functionality over suchapplications. FIG. 1 is a block diagram 100 of an example embodimentwith IDCS 118, providing a unified identity platform 126 for onboardingusers and applications. The embodiment provides seamless user experienceacross various applications such as enterprise cloud applications 102,partner cloud applications 104, third-party cloud applications 110, andcustomer applications 112. Applications 102, 104, 110, 112 may beaccessed through different channels, for example, by a mobile phone user108 via a mobile phone 106, by a desktop computer user 116 via a browser114, etc. A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is asoftware application for retrieving, presenting, and traversinginformation resources on the World Wide Web. Examples of web browsersare Mozilla Firefox®, Google Chrome®, Microsoft Internet Explorer®, andApple Safari®.

IDCS 118 provides a unified view 124 of a user's applications, a unifiedsecure credential across devices and applications (via identity platform126), and a unified way of administration (via an admin console 122).IDCS services may be obtained by calling IDCS APIs 142. Such servicesmay include, for example, login/SSO services 128 (e.g., OpenID Connect),federation services 130 (e.g., SAML), token services 132 (e.g., OAuth),directory services 134 (e.g., SCIM), provisioning services 136 (e.g.,SCIM or Any Transport over Multiprotocol (“AToM”)), event services 138(e.g., REST), and authorization services 140 (e.g., SCIM). IDCS 118 mayfurther provide reports and dashboards 120 related to the offeredservices.

Integration Tools

Generally, it is common for large corporations to have an IAM system inplace to secure access to their on-premise applications. Businesspractices are usually matured and standardized around an in-house IAMsystem such as “Oracle IAM Suite” from Oracle Corp. Even small to mediumorganizations usually have their business processes designed aroundmanaging user access through a simple directory solution such asMicrosoft Active Directory (“AD”). To enable on-premise integration,embodiments provide tools that allow customers to integrate theirapplications with IDCS.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram 200 of an example embodiment with IDCS 202 ina cloud environment 208, providing integration with an AD 204 that ison-premise 206. The embodiment provides seamless user experience acrossall applications including on-premise and third-party applications, forexample, on-premise applications 218 and various applications/servicesin cloud 208 such as cloud services 210, cloud applications 212, partnerapplications 214, and customer applications 216. Cloud applications 212may include, for example, Human Capital Management (“HCM”), CRM, talentacquisition (e.g., Oracle Taleo cloud service from Oracle Corp.),Configure Price and Quote (“CPQ”), etc. Cloud services 210 may include,for example, Platform as a Service (“PaaS”), Java, database, businessintelligence (“BI”), documents, etc.

Applications 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, may be accessed through differentchannels, for example, by a mobile phone user 220 via a mobile phone222, by a desktop computer user 224 via a browser 226, etc. Theembodiment provides automated identity synchronization from on-premiseAD data to cloud data via a SCIM identity bus 234 between cloud 208 andthe enterprise 206. The embodiment further provides a SAML bus 228 forfederating authentication from cloud 208 to on-premise AD 204 (e.g.,using passwords 232).

Generally, an identity bus is a service bus for identity relatedservices. A service bus provides a platform for communicating messagesfrom one system to another system. It is a controlled mechanism forexchanging information between trusted systems, for example, in aservice oriented architecture (“SOA”). An identity bus is a logical busbuilt according to standard HTTP based mechanisms such as web service,web server proxies, etc. The communication in an identity bus may beperformed according to a respective protocol (e.g., SCIM, SAML, Open IDConnect, etc.). For example, a SAML bus is an HTTP based connectionbetween two systems for communicating messages for SAML services.Similarly, a SCIM bus is used to communicate SCIM messages according tothe SCIM protocol.

The embodiment of FIG. 2 implements an identity (“ID”) bridge 230 thatis a small binary (e.g., 1 MB in size) that can be downloaded andinstalled on-premise 206 alongside a customer's AD 204. ID Bridge 230listens to users and groups (e.g., groups of users) from theorganizational units (“OUs”) chosen by the customer and synchronizesthose users to cloud 208. In one embodiment, users' passwords 232 arenot synchronized to cloud 208. Customers can manage application accessfor users by mapping IDCS users' groups to cloud applications managed inIDCS 208. Whenever the users' group membership is changed on-premise206, their corresponding cloud application access changes automatically.

For example, an employee moving from engineering to sales can get nearinstantaneous access to the sales cloud and lose access to the developercloud. When this change is reflected in on-premise AD 204, cloudapplication access change is accomplished in near-real-time. Similarly,access to cloud applications managed in IDCS 208 is revoked for usersleaving the company. For full automation, customers may set up SSObetween on-premise AD 204 and IDCS 208 through, e.g., AD federationservice (“AD/FS”, or some other mechanism that implements SAMLfederation) so that end users can get access to cloud applications 210,212, 214, 216, and on-premise applications 218 with a single corporatepassword 332.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram 300 of an example embodiment that includes thesame components 202, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224,226, 228, 234 as in FIG. 2. However, in the embodiment of FIG. 3, IDCS202 provides integration with an on-premise IDM 304 such as Oracle IDM.Oracle IDM 304 is a software suite from Oracle Corp. for providing IAMfunctionality. The embodiment provides seamless user experience acrossall applications including on-premise and third-party applications. Theembodiment provisions user identities from on-premise IDM 304 to IDCS208 via SCIM identity bus 234 between cloud 202 and enterprise 206. Theembodiment further provides SAML bus 228 (or an Open ID Connect bus) forfederating authentication from cloud 208 to on-premise 206.

In the embodiment of FIG. 3, an Oracle Identity Manager (“OIM”)Connector 302 from Oracle Corp., and an Oracle Access Manager (“OAM”)federation module 306 from Oracle Corp., are implemented as extensionmodules of Oracle IDM 304. A connector is a module that has physicalawareness about how to talk to a system. OIM is an applicationconfigured to manage user identities (e.g., manage user accounts indifferent systems based on what a user should and should not have accessto). OAM is a security application that provides access managementfunctionality such as web SSO; identity context, authentication andauthorization; policy administration; testing; logging; auditing; etc.OAM has built-in support for SAML. If a user has an account in IDCS 202,OIM connector 302 and OAM federation 306 can be used with Oracle IDM 304to create/delete that account and manage access from that account.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram 400 of an example embodiment that includes thesame components 202, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224,226, 234 as in FIGS. 2 and 3. However, in the embodiment of FIG. 3, IDCS202 provides functionality to extend cloud identities to on-premiseapplications 218. The embodiment provides seamless view of the identityacross all applications including on-premise and third-partyapplications. In the embodiment of FIG. 4, SCIM identity bus 234 is usedto synchronize data in IDCS 202 with on-premise LDAP data called “CloudCache” 402. Cloud Cache 402 is disclosed in more detail below.

Generally, an application that is configured to communicate based onLDAP needs an LDAP connection. An LDAP connection may not be establishedby such application through a URL (unlike, e.g., “www.google.com” thatmakes a connection to Google) since the LDAP needs to be on a localnetwork. In the embodiment of FIG. 4, an LDAP-based application 218makes a connection to Cloud Cache 402, and Cloud Cache 402 establishes aconnection to IDCS 202 and then pulls data from IDCS 202 as it is beingrequested. The communication between IDCS 202 and Cloud Cache 402 may beimplemented according to the SCIM protocol. For example, Cloud Cache 402may use SCIM bus 234 to send a SCIM request to IDCS 202 and receivecorresponding data in return.

Generally, fully implementing an application includes building aconsumer portal, running marketing campaigns on the external userpopulation, supporting web and mobile channels, and dealing with userauthentication, sessions, user profiles, user groups, application roles,password policies, self-service/registration, social integration,identity federation, etc. Generally, application developers are notidentity/security experts. Therefore, on-demand identity managementservices are desired.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram 500 of an example embodiment that includes thesame components 202, 220, 222, 224, 226, 234, 402, as in FIGS. 2-4.However, in the embodiment of FIG. 5, IDCS 202 provides secure identitymanagement on demand. The embodiment provides on demand integration withidentity services of IDCS 202 (e.g., based on standards such as OpenIDConnect, OAuth2, SAML2, or SCIM). Applications 505 (which may beon-premise, in a public cloud, or in a private cloud) may call identityservice APIs 504 in IDCS 202. The services provided by IDCS 202 mayinclude, for example, self-service registration 506, password management508, user profile management 510, user authentication 512, tokenmanagement 514, social integration 516, etc.

In this embodiment, SCIM identity bus 234 is used to synchronize data inIDCS 202 with data in on-premise LDAP Cloud Cache 402. Further, a “CloudGate” 502 running on a web server/proxy (e.g., NGINX, Apache, etc.) maybe used by applications 505 to obtain user web SSO and REST API securityfrom IDCS 202. Cloud Gate 502 is a component that secures access tomulti-tenant IDCS microservices by ensuring that client applicationsprovide valid access tokens, and/or users successfully authenticate inorder to establish SSO sessions. Cloud Gate 502 is further disclosedbelow. Cloud Gate 502 (enforcement point similar to webgate/webagent)enables applications running behind supported web servers to participatein SSO.

One embodiment provides SSO and cloud SSO functionality. A general pointof entry for both on-premise IAM and IDCS in many organizations is SSO.Cloud SSO enables users to access multiple cloud resources with a singleuser sign-in. Often, organizations will want to federate theiron-premise identities. Accordingly, embodiments utilize open standardsto allow for integration with existing SSO to preserve and extendinvestment (e.g., until a complete, eventual transition to an identitycloud service approach is made).

One embodiment may provide the following functionalities:

-   -   maintain an identity store to track user accounts, ownership,        access, and permissions that have been authorized,    -   integrate with workflow to facilitate various approvals (e.g.,        management, IT, human resources, legal, and compliance) needed        for applications access,    -   provision SaaS user accounts for selective devices (e.g., mobile        and personal computer (“PC”)) with access to user portal        containing many private and public cloud resources, and    -   facilitate periodic management attestation review for compliance        with regulations and current job responsibilities.

In addition to these functions, embodiments may further provide:

-   -   cloud account provisioning to manage account life cycle in cloud        applications,    -   more robust multifactor authentication (“MFA”) integration,    -   extensive mobile security capabilities, and    -   dynamic authentication options.

One embodiment provides adaptive authentication and MFA. Generally,passwords and challenge questions have been seen as inadequate andsusceptible to common attacks such as phishing. Most business entitiestoday are looking at some form of MFA to reduce risk. To be successfullydeployed, however, solutions need to be easily provisioned, maintained,and understood by the end user, as end users usually resist anythingthat interferes with their digital experience. Companies are looking forways to securely incorporate bring your own device (“BYOD”), socialidentities, remote users, customers, and contractors, while making MFAan almost transparent component of a seamless user access experience.Within an MFA deployment, industry standards such as OAuth and OpenIDConnect are essential to ensure integration of existing multifactorsolutions and the incorporation of newer, adaptive authenticationtechnology. Accordingly, embodiments define dynamic (or adaptive)authentication as the evaluation of available information (i.e., IPaddress, location, time of day, and biometrics) to prove an identityafter a user session has been initiated. With the appropriate standards(e.g., open authentication (“OATH”) and fast identity online (“FIDO”))integration and extensible identity management framework, embodimentsprovide MFA solutions that can be adopted, upgraded, and integratedeasily within an IT organization as part of an end-to-end secure IAMdeployment. When considering MFA and adaptive policies, organizationsmust implement consistent policies across on-premise and cloudresources, which in a hybrid IDCS and on-premise IAM environmentrequires integration between systems.

One embodiment provides user provisioning and certification. Generally,the fundamental function of an IAM solution is to enable and support theentire user provisioning life cycle. This includes providing users withthe application access appropriate for their identity and role withinthe organization, certifying that they have the correct ongoing accesspermissions (e.g., as their role or the tasks or applications usedwithin their role change over time), and promptly de-provisioning themas their departure from the organization may require. This is importantnot only for meeting various compliance requirements but also becauseinappropriate insider access is a major source of security breaches andattacks. An automated user provisioning capability within an identitycloud solution can be important not only in its own right but also aspart of a hybrid IAM solution whereby IDCS provisioning may providegreater flexibility than an on-premise solution for transitions as acompany downsizes, upsizes, merges, or looks to integrate existingsystems with IaaS/PaaS/SaaS environments. An IDCS approach can save timeand effort in one-off upgrades and ensure appropriate integration amongnecessary departments, divisions, and systems. The need to scale thistechnology often sneaks up on corporations, and the ability to deliver ascalable IDCS capability immediately across the enterprise can providebenefits in flexibility, cost, and control.

Generally, an employee is granted additional privileges (i.e.,“privilege creep”) over the years as her/his job changes. Companies thatare lightly regulated generally lack an “attestation” process thatrequires managers to regularly audit their employees' privileges (e.g.,access to networks, servers, applications, and data) to halt or slow theprivilege creep that results in over-privileged accounts. Accordingly,one embodiment may provide a regularly conducted (at least once a year)attestation process. Further, with mergers and acquisitions, the needfor these tools and services increases exponentially as users are onSaaS systems, on-premise, span different departments, and/or are beingde-provisioned or re-allocated. The move to cloud can further complicatethis situation, and the process can quickly escalate beyond existing,often manually managed, certification methods. Accordingly, oneembodiment automates these functions and applies sophisticated analyticsto user profiles, access history, provisioning/de-provisioning, andfine-grained entitlements.

One embodiment provides identity analytics. Generally, the ability tointegrate identity analytics with the IAM engine for comprehensivecertification and attestation can be critical to securing anorganization's risk profile. Properly deployed identity analytics candemand total internal policy enforcement. Identity analytics thatprovide a unified single management view across cloud and on-premise aremuch needed in a proactive governance, risk, and compliance (“GRC”)enterprise environment, and can aid in providing a closed-loop processfor reducing risk and meeting compliance regulations. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides identity analytics that are easily customizable bythe client to accommodate specific industry demands and governmentregulations for reports and analysis required by managers, executives,and auditors.

One embodiment provides self-service and access request functionality toimprove the experience and efficiency of the end user and to reducecosts from help desk calls. Generally, while a number of companiesdeploy on-premise self-service access request for their employees, manyhave not extended these systems adequately outside the formal corporatewalls. Beyond employee use, a positive digital customer experienceincreases business credibility and ultimately contributes to revenueincrease, and companies not only save on customer help desk calls andcosts but also improve customer satisfaction. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides an identity cloud service environment that is basedon open standards and seamlessly integrates with existing access controlsoftware and MFA mechanisms when necessary. The SaaS delivery modelsaves time and effort formerly devoted to systems upgrades andmaintenance, freeing professional IT staff to focus on more corebusiness applications.

One embodiment provides privileged account management (“PAM”).Generally, every organization, whether using SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, oron-premise applications, is vulnerable to unauthorized privilegedaccount abuse by insiders with super-user access credentials such assystem administrators, executives, HR officers, contractors, systemsintegrators, etc. Moreover, outside threats typically first breach alow-level user account to eventually reach and exploit privileged useraccess controls within the enterprise system. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides PAM to prevent such unauthorized insider accountuse. The main component of a PAM solution is a password vault which maybe delivered in various ways, e.g., as software to be installed on anenterprise server, as a virtual appliance also on an enterprise server,as a packaged hardware/software appliance, or as part of a cloudservice. PAM functionality is similar to a physical safe used to storepasswords kept in an envelope and changed periodically, with a manifestfor signing them in and out. One embodiment allows for a passwordcheckout as well as setting time limits, forcing periodic changes,automatically tracking checkout, and reporting on all activities. Oneembodiment provides a way to connect directly through to a requestedresource without the user ever knowing the password. This capabilityalso paves the way for session management and additional functionality.

Generally, most cloud services utilize APIs and administrativeinterfaces, which provide opportunities for infiltrators to circumventsecurity. Accordingly, one embodiment accounts for these holes in PAMpractices as the move to the cloud presents new challenges for PAM. Manysmall to medium sized businesses now administer their own SaaS systems(e.g., Office 365), while larger companies increasingly have individualbusiness units spinning up their own SaaS and IaaS services. Thesecustomers find themselves with PAM capabilities within the identitycloud service solutions or from their IaaS/PaaS provider but with littleexperience in handling this responsibility. Moreover, in some cases,many different geographically dispersed business units are trying tosegregate administrative responsibilities for the same SaaSapplications. Accordingly, one embodiment allows customers in thesesituations to link existing PAM into the overall identity framework ofthe identity cloud service and move toward greater security andcompliance with the assurance of scaling to cloud load requirements asbusiness needs dictate.

API Platform

Embodiments provide an API platform that exposes a collection ofcapabilities as services. The APIs are aggregated into microservices andeach microservice exposes one or more of the APIs. That is, eachmicroservice may expose different types of APIs. In one embodiment, eachmicroservice communicates only through its APIs. In one embodiment, eachAPI may be a microservice. In one embodiment, multiple APIs areaggregated into a service based on a target capability to be provided bythat service (e.g., OAuth, SAML, Admin, etc.). As a result, similar APIsare not exposed as separate runtime processes. The APIs are what is madeavailable to a service consumer to use the services provided by IDCS.

Generally, in the web environment of IDCS, a URL includes three parts: ahost, a microservice, and a resource (e.g., host/microservice/resource).In one embodiment, the microservice is characterized by having aspecific URL prefix, e.g., “host/oauth/v1” where the actual microserviceis “oauth/v1”, and under “oauth/v1” there are multiple APIs, e.g., anAPI to request tokens: “host/oauth/v1/token”, an API to authenticate auser: “host/oauth/v1/authorize”, etc. That is, the URL implements amicroservice, and the resource portion of the URL implements an API.Accordingly, multiple APIs are aggregated under the same microservice.In one embodiment, the host portion of the URL identifies a tenant(e.g., https://tenant3.identity.oraclecloud.com:/oauth/v1/token”).

Configuring applications that integrate with external services with thenecessary endpoints and keeping that configuration up to date istypically a challenge. To meet this challenge, embodiments expose apublic discovery API at a well-known location from where applicationscan discover the information about IDCS they need in order to consumeIDCS APIs. In one embodiment, two discovery documents are supported:IDCS Configuration (which includes IDCS, SAML, SCIM, OAuth, and OpenIDConnect configuration, at e.g.,<IDCS-URL>/.well-known/idcs-configuration), and Industry-standard OpenIDConnect Configuration (at, e.g.,<IDCS-URL>/.well-known/openid-configuration). Applications can retrievediscovery documents by being configured with a single IDCS URL.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram providing a system view 600 of IDCS in oneembodiment. In FIG. 6, any one of a variety of applications/services 602may make HTTP calls to IDCS APIs to use IDCS services. Examples of suchapplications/services 602 are web applications, native applications(e.g., applications that are built to run on a specific operatingsystem, such as Windows applications, iOS applications, Androidapplications, etc.), web services, customer applications, partnerapplications, or any services provided by a public cloud, such asSoftware as a Service (“SaaS”), PaaS, and Infrastructure as a Service(“IaaS”).

In one embodiment, the HTTP requests of applications/services 602 thatrequire IDCS services go through an Oracle Public Cloud BIG-IP appliance604 and an IDCS BIG-IP appliance 606 (or similar technologies such as aLoad Balancer, or a component called a Cloud Load Balancer as a Service(“LBaaS”) that implements appropriate security rules to protect thetraffic). However, the requests can be received in any manner. At IDCSBIG-IP appliance 606 (or, as applicable, a similar technology such as aLoad Balancer or a Cloud LBaaS), a cloud provisioning engine 608performs tenant and service orchestration. In one embodiment, cloudprovisioning engine 608 manages internal security artifacts associatedwith a new tenant being on-boarded into the cloud or a new serviceinstance purchased by a customer.

The HTTP requests are then received by an IDCS web routing tier 610 thatimplements a security gate (i.e., Cloud Gate) and provides servicerouting and microservices registration and discovery 612. Depending onthe service requested, the HTTP request is forwarded to an IDCSmicroservice in the IDCS middle tier 614. IDCS microservices processexternal and internal HTTP requests. IDCS microservices implementplatform services and infrastructure services. IDCS platform servicesare separately deployed Java-based runtime services implementing thebusiness of IDCS. IDCS infrastructure services are separately deployedruntime services providing infrastructure support for IDCS. IDCS furtherincludes infrastructure libraries that are common code packaged asshared libraries used by IDCS services and shared libraries.Infrastructure services and libraries provide supporting capabilities asrequired by platform services for implementing their functionality.

Platform Services

In one embodiment, IDCS supports standard authentication protocols,hence IDCS microservices include platform services such as OpenIDConnect, OAuth, SAML2, System for Cross-domain Identity Management++(“SCIM++”), etc.

The Open ID Connect platform service implements standard Open ID ConnectLogin/Logout flows. Interactive web-based and native applicationsleverage standard browser-based Open ID Connect flow to request userauthentication, receiving standard identity tokens that are JavaScriptObject Notation (“JSON”) Web Tokens (“JWTs”) conveying the user'sauthenticated identity. Internally, the runtime authentication model isstateless, maintaining the user's authentication/session state in theform of a host HTTP cookie (including the JWT identity token). Theauthentication interaction initiated via the Open ID Connect protocol isdelegated to a trusted SSO service that implements the user login/logoutceremonies for local and federated logins. Further details of thisfunctionality are disclosed below with reference to FIGS. 10 and 11. Inone embodiment, Open ID Connect functionality is implemented accordingto, for example, OpenID Foundation standards.

The OAuth2 platform service provides token authorization services. Itprovides a rich API infrastructure for creating and validating accesstokens conveying user rights to make API calls. It supports a range ofuseful token grant types, enabling customers to securely connect clientsto their services. It implements standard 2-legged and 3-legged OAuth2token grant types. Support for OpenID Connect (“OIDC”) enables compliantapplications (OIDC relaying parties (“RP”s)) to integrate with IDCS asthe identity provider (OIDC OpenID provider (“OP”)). Similarly, theintegration of IDCS as OIDC RP with social OIDC OP (e.g., Facebook,Google, etc.) enables customers to allow social identities policy-basedaccess to applications. In one embodiment, OAuth functionality isimplemented according to, for example, Internet Engineering Task Force(“IETF”), Request for Comments (“RFC”) 6749.

The SAML2 platform service provides identity federation services. Itenables customers to set up federation agreements with their partnersbased on SAML identity provider (“IDP”) and SAML service provider (“SP”)relationship models. In one embodiment, the SAML2 platform serviceimplements standard SAML2 Browser POST Login and Logout Profiles. In oneembodiment, SAML functionality is implemented according to, for example,IETF, RFC 7522.

SCIM is an open standard for automating the exchange of user identityinformation between identity domains or information technology (“IT”)systems, as provided by, e.g., IETF, RFCs 7642, 7643, 7644. The SCIM++platform service provides identity administration services and enablescustomers to access IDP features of IDCS. The administration servicesexpose a set of stateless REST interfaces (i.e., APIs) that coveridentity lifecycle, password management, group management, etc.,exposing such artifacts as web-accessible resources.

All IDCS configuration artifacts are resources, and the APIs of theadministration services allow for managing IDCS resources (e.g., users,roles, password policies, applications, SAML/OIDC identity providers,SAML service providers, keys, certifications, notification templates,etc.). Administration services leverage and extend the SCIM standard toimplement schema-based REST APIs for Create, Read, Update, Delete, andQuery (“CRUDQ”) operations on all IDCS resources. Additionally, allinternal resources of IDCS used for administration and configuration ofIDCS itself are exposed as SCIM-based REST APIs. Access to the identitystore 618 is isolated to the SCIM++ API.

In one embodiment, for example, the SCIM standard is implemented tomanage the users and groups resources as defined by the SCIMspecifications, while SCIM++ is configured to support additional IDCSinternal resources (e.g., password policies, roles, settings, etc.)using the language defined by the SCIM standard.

The Administration service supports the SCIM 2.0 standard endpoints withthe standard SCIM 2.0 core schemas and schema extensions where needed.In addition, the Administration service supports several SCIM 2.0compliant endpoint extensions to manage other IDCS resources, forexample, Users, Groups, Applications, Settings, etc. The Administrationservice also supports a set of remote procedure call-style (“RPC-style”)REST interfaces that do not perform CRUDQ operations but instead providea functional service, for example, “UserPasswordGenerator,”“UserPasswordValidator,” etc.

IDCS Administration APIs use the OAuth2 protocol for authentication andauthorization. IDCS supports common OAuth2 scenarios such as scenariosfor web server, mobile, and JavaScript applications. Access to IDCS APIsis protected by access tokens. To access IDCS Administration APIs, anapplication needs to be registered as an OAuth2 client or an IDCSApplication (in which case the OAuth2 client is created automatically)through the IDCS Administration console and be granted desired IDCSAdministration Roles. When making IDCS Administration API calls, theapplication first requests an access token from the IDCS OAuth2 Service.After acquiring the token, the application sends the access token to theIDCS API by including it in the HTTP authorization header. Applicationscan use IDCS Administration REST APIs directly, or use an IDCS JavaClient API Library.

Infrastructure Services

The IDCS infrastructure services support the functionality of IDCSplatform services. These runtime services include an event processingservice (for asynchronously processing user notifications, applicationsubscriptions, and auditing to database); a job scheduler service (forscheduling and executing jobs, e.g., executing immediately or at aconfigured time long-running tasks that do not require userintervention); a cache management service; a storage management service(for integrating with a public cloud storage service); a reports service(for generating reports and dashboards); an SSO service (for managinginternal user authentication and SSO); a user interface (“UI”) service(for hosting different types of UI clients); and a service managerservice. Service manager is an internal interface between the OraclePublic Cloud and IDCS. Service manager manages commands issued by theOracle Public Cloud, where the commands need to be implemented by IDCS.For example, when a customer signs up for an account in a cloud storebefore they can buy something, the cloud sends a request to IDCS askingto create a tenant. In this case, service manager implements the cloudspecific operations that the cloud expects IDCS to support.

An IDCS microservice may call another IDCS microservice through anetwork interface (i.e., an HTTP request).

In one embodiment, IDCS may also provide a schema service (or apersistence service) that allows for using a database schema. A schemaservice allows for delegating the responsibility of managing databaseschemas to IDCS. Accordingly, a user of IDCS does not need to manage adatabase since there is an IDCS service that provides thatfunctionality. For example, the user may use the database to persistschemas on a per tenant basis, and when there is no more space in thedatabase, the schema service will manage the functionality of obtaininganother database and growing the space so that the users do not have tomanage the database themselves.

IDCS further includes data stores which are data repositoriesrequired/generated by IDCS, including an identity store 618 (storingusers, groups, etc.), a global database 620 (storing configuration dataused by IDCS to configure itself), an operational schema 622 (providingper tenant schema separation and storing customer data on a per customerbasis), an audit schema 624 (storing audit data), a caching cluster 626(storing cached objects to speed up performance), etc. All internal andexternal IDCS consumers integrate with the identity services overstandards-based protocols. This enables use of a domain name system(“DNS”) to resolve where to route requests, and decouples consumingapplications from understanding the internal implementation of identityservices.

Real-Time and Near-Real-Time Tasks

IDCS separates the tasks of a requested service into synchronousreal-time and asynchronous near-real-time tasks, where real-time tasksinclude only the operations that are needed for the user to proceed. Inone embodiment, a real-time task is a task that is performed withminimal delay, and a near-real-time task is a task that is performed inthe background without the user having to wait for it. In oneembodiment, a real-time task is a task that is performed withsubstantially no delay or with negligible delay, and appears to a useras being performed almost instantaneously.

The real-time tasks perform the main business functionality of aspecific identity service. For example, when requesting a login service,an application sends a message to authenticate a user's credentials andget a session cookie in return. What the user experiences is logginginto the system. However, several other tasks may be performed inconnection with the user's logging in, such as validating who the useris, auditing, sending notifications, etc. Accordingly, validating thecredentials is a task that is performed in real-time so that the user isgiven an HTTP cookie to start a session, but the tasks related tonotifications (e.g., sending an email to notify the creation of anaccount), audits (e.g., tracking/recording), etc., are near-real-timetasks that can be performed asynchronously so that the user can proceedwith least delay.

When an HTTP request for a microservice is received, the correspondingreal-time tasks are performed by the microservice in the middle tier,and the remaining near-real-time tasks such as operational logic/eventsthat are not necessarily subject to real-time processing are offloadedto message queues 628 that support a highly scalable asynchronous eventmanagement system 630 with guaranteed delivery and processing.Accordingly, certain behaviors are pushed from the front end to thebackend to enable IDCS to provide high level service to the customers byreducing latencies in response times. For example, a login process mayinclude validation of credentials, submission of a log report, updatingof the last login time, etc., but these tasks can be offloaded to amessage queue and performed in near-real-time as opposed to real-time.

In one example, a system may need to register or create a new user. Thesystem calls an IDCS SCIM API to create a user. The end result is thatwhen the user is created in identity store 618, the user gets anotification email including a link to reset their password. When IDCSreceives a request to register or create a new user, the correspondingmicroservice looks at configuration data in the operational database(located in global database 620 in FIG. 6) and determines that the“create user” operation is marked with a “create user” event which isidentified in the configuration data as an asynchronous operation. Themicroservice returns to the client and indicates that the creation ofthe user is done successfully, but the actual sending of thenotification email is postponed and pushed to the backend. In order todo so, the microservice uses a messaging API 616 to queue the message inqueue 628 which is a store.

In order to dequeue queue 628, a messaging microservice, which is aninfrastructure microservice, continually runs in the background andscans queue 628 looking for events in queue 628. The events in queue 628are processed by event subscribers 630 such as audit, user notification,application subscriptions, data analytics, etc. Depending on the taskindicated by an event, event subscribers 630 may communicate with, forexample, audit schema 624, a user notification service 634, an identityevent subscriber 632, etc. For example, when the messaging microservicefinds the “create user” event in queue 628, it executes thecorresponding notification logic and sends the corresponding email tothe user.

In one embodiment, queue 628 queues operational events published bymicroservices 614 as well as resource events published by APIs 616 thatmanage IDCS resources.

IDCS uses a real-time caching structure to enhance system performanceand user experience. The cache itself may also be provided as amicroservice. IDCS implements an elastic cache cluster 626 that grows asthe number of customers supported by IDCS scales. Cache cluster 626 maybe implemented with a distributed data grid which is disclosed in moredetail below. In one embodiment, write-only resources bypass cache.

In one embodiment, IDCS runtime components publish health andoperational metrics to a public cloud monitoring module 636 thatcollects such metrics of a public cloud such as Oracle Public Cloud fromOracle Corp.

In one embodiment, IDCS may be used to create a user. For example, aclient application 602 may issue a REST API call to create a user. Adminservice (a platform service in 614) delegates the call to a user manager(an infrastructure library/service in 614), which in turn creates theuser in the tenant-specific ID store stripe in ID store 618. On “UserCreate Success”, the user manager audits the operation to the audittable in audit schema 624, and publishes an“identity.user.create.success” event to message queue 628. Identitysubscriber 632 picks up the event and sends a “Welcome” email to thenewly created user, including newly created login details.

In one embodiment, IDCS may be used to grant a role to a user, resultingin a user provisioning action. For example, a client application 602 mayissue a REST API call to grant a user a role. Admin service (a platformservice in 614) delegates the call to a role manager (an infrastructurelibrary/service in 614), who grants the user a role in thetenant-specific ID store stripe in ID store 618. On “Role GrantSuccess”, the role manager audits the operations to the audit table inaudit schema 624, and publishes an “identity.user.role.grant.success”event to message queue 628. Identity subscriber 632 picks up the eventand evaluates the provisioning grant policy. If there is an activeapplication grant on the role being granted, a provisioning subscriberperforms some validation, initiates account creation, calls out thetarget system, creates an account on the target system, and marks theaccount creation as successful. Each of these functionalities may resultin publishing of corresponding events, such as“prov.account.create.initiate”, “prov.target.create.initiate”,“prov.target.create.success”, or “prov.account.create.success”. Theseevents may have their own business metrics aggregating number ofaccounts created in the target system over the last N days.

In one embodiment, IDCS may be used for a user to log in. For example, aclient application 602 may use one of the supported authentication flowsto request a login for a user. IDCS authenticates the user, and uponsuccess, audits the operation to the audit table in audit schema 624.Upon failure, IDCS audits the failure in audit schema 624, and publishes“login.user.login.failure” event in message queue 628. A loginsubscriber picks up the event, updates its metrics for the user, anddetermines if additional analytics on the user's access history need tobe performed.

Accordingly, by implementing “inversion of control” functionality (e.g.,changing the flow of execution to schedule the execution of an operationat a later time so that the operation is under the control of anothersystem), embodiments enable additional event queues and subscribers tobe added dynamically to test new features on a small user sample beforedeploying to broader user base, or to process specific events forspecific internal or external customers.

Stateless Functionality

IDCS microservices are stateless, meaning the microservices themselvesdo not maintain state. “State” refers to the data that an applicationuses in order to perform its capabilities. IDCS provides multi-tenantfunctionality by persisting all state into tenant specific repositoriesin the IDCS data tier. The middle tier (i.e., the code that processesthe requests) does not have data stored in the same location as theapplication code. Accordingly, IDCS is highly scalable, bothhorizontally and vertically.

To scale vertically (or scale up/down) means to add resources to (orremove resources from) a single node in a system, typically involvingthe addition of CPUs or memory to a single computer. Verticalscalability allows an application to scale up to the limits of itshardware. To scale horizontally (or scale out/in) means to add morenodes to (or remove nodes from) a system, such as adding a new computerto a distributed software application. Horizontal scalability allows anapplication to scale almost infinitely, bound only by the amount ofbandwidth provided by the network.

Stateless-ness of the middle tier of IDCS makes it horizontally scalablejust by adding more CPUs, and the IDCS components that perform the workof the application do not need to have a designated physicalinfrastructure where a particular application is running. Stateless-nessof the IDCS middle tier makes IDCS highly available, even when providingidentity services to a very large number of customers/tenants. Each passthrough an IDCS application/service is focused on CPU usage only toperform the application transaction itself but not use hardware to storedata. Scaling is accomplished by adding more slices when the applicationis running, while data for the transaction is stored at a persistencelayer where more copies can be added when needed.

The IDCS web tier, middle tier, and data tier can each scaleindependently and separately. The web tier can be scaled to handle moreHTTP requests. The middle tier can be scaled to support more servicefunctionality. The data tier can be scaled to support more tenants.

IDCS Functional View

FIG. 6A is an example block diagram 600 b of a functional view of IDCSin one embodiment. In block diagram 600 b, the IDCS functional stackincludes services, shared libraries, and data stores. The servicesinclude IDCS platform services 640 b, IDCS premium services 650 b, andIDCS infrastructure services 662 b. In one embodiment, IDCS platformservices 640 b and IDCS premium services 650 b are separately deployedJava-based runtime services implementing the business of IDCS, and IDCSinfrastructure services 662 b are separately deployed runtime servicesproviding infrastructure support for IDCS. The shared libraries includeIDCS infrastructure libraries 680 b which are common code packaged asshared libraries used by IDCS services and shared libraries. The datastores are data repositories required/generated by IDCS, includingidentity store 698 b, global configuration 700 b, message store 702 b,global tenant 704 b, personalization settings 706 b, resources 708 b,user transient data 710 b, system transient data 712 b, per-tenantschemas (managed ExaData) 714 b, operational store (not shown), cachingstore (not shown), etc.

In one embodiment, IDCS platform services 640 b include, for example,Open ID Connect service 642 b, OAuth2 service 644 b, SAML2 service 646b, and SCIM++ service 648 b. In one embodiment, IDCS premium servicesinclude, for example, cloud SSO and governance 652 b, enterprisegovernance 654 b, AuthN broker 656 b, federation broker 658 b, andprivate account management 660 b.

IDCS infrastructure services 662 b and IDCS infrastructure libraries 680b provide supporting capabilities as required by IDCS platform services640 b to do their work. In one embodiment, IDCS infrastructure services662 b include job scheduler 664 b, UI 666 b, SSO 668 b, reports 670 b,cache 672 b, storage 674 b, service manager 676 b (public cloudcontrol), and event processor 678 b (user notifications, appsubscriptions, auditing, data analytics). In one embodiment, IDCSinfrastructure libraries 680 b include data manager APIs 682 b, eventAPIs 684 b, storage APIs 686 b, authentication APIs 688 b, authorizationAPIs 690 b, cookie APIs 692 b, keys APIs 694 b, and credentials APIs 696b. In one embodiment, cloud compute service 602 b (internal Nimbula)supports the function of IDCS infrastructure services 662 b and IDCSinfrastructure libraries 680 b.

In one embodiment, IDCS provides various UIs 602 b for a consumer ofIDCS services, such as customer end user UI 604 b, customer admin UI 606b, DevOps admin UI 608 b, and login UI 610 b. In one embodiment, IDCSallows for integration 612 b of applications (e.g., customer apps 614 b,partner apps 616 b, and cloud apps 618 b) and firmware integration 620b. In one embodiment, various environments may integrate with IDCS tosupport their access control needs. Such integration may be provided by,for example, identity bridge 622 b (providing AD integration, WNA, andSCIM connector), Apache agent 624 b, or MSFT agent 626 b.

In one embodiment, internal and external IDCS consumers integrate withthe identity services of IDCS over standards-based protocols 628 b, suchas Open ID Connect 630 b, OAuth2 632 b, SAML2 634 b, SCIM 636 b, andREST/HTTP 638 b. This enables use of a domain name system (“DNS”) toresolve where to route requests, and decouples the consumingapplications from understanding internal implementation of the identityservices.

The IDCS functional view in FIG. 6A further includes public cloudinfrastructure services that provide common functionality that IDCSdepends on for user notifications (cloud notification service 718 b),file storage (cloud storage service 716 b), and metrics/alerting forDevOps (cloud monitoring service (EM) 722 b and cloud metrics service(Graphite) 720 b).

Cloud Gate

In one embodiment, IDCS implements a “Cloud Gate” in the web tier. CloudGate is a web server plugin that enables web applications to externalizeuser SSO to an identity management system (e.g., IDCS), similar toWebGate or WebAgent technologies that work with enterprise IDM stacks.Cloud Gate acts as a security gatekeeper that secures access to IDCSAPIs. In one embodiment, Cloud Gate is implemented by a web/proxy serverplugin that provides a web Policy Enforcement Point (“PEP”) forprotecting HTTP resources based on OAuth.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram 700 of an embodiment that implements a CloudGate 702 running in a web server 712 and acting as a Policy EnforcementPoint (“PEP”) configured to integrate with IDCS Policy Decision Point(“PDP”) using open standards (e.g., OAuth2, Open ID Connect, etc.) whilesecuring access to web browser and REST API resources 714 of anapplication. In some embodiments, the PDP is implemented at OAuth and/orOpen ID Connect microservices 704. For example, when a user browser 706sends a request to IDCS for a login of a user 710, a corresponding IDCSPDP validates the credentials and then decides whether the credentialsare sufficient (e.g., whether to request for further credentials such asa second password). In the embodiment of FIG. 7, Cloud Gate 702 may actboth as the PEP and as the PDP since it has a local policy.

As part of one-time deployment, Cloud Gate 702 is registered with IDCSas an OAuth2 client, enabling it to request OIDC and OAuth2 operationsagainst IDCS. Thereafter, it maintains configuration information aboutan application's protected and unprotected resources, subject to requestmatching rules (how to match URLs, e.g., with wild cards, regularexpressions, etc.). Cloud Gate 702 can be deployed to protect differentapplications having different security policies, and the protectedapplications can be multi-tenant.

During web browser-based user access, Cloud Gate 702 acts as an OIDC RP718 initiating a user authentication flow. If user 710 has no validlocal user session, Cloud Gate 702 re-directs the user to the SSOmicroservice and participates in the OIDC “Authorization Code” flow withthe SSO microservice. The flow concludes with the delivery of a JWT asan identity token. Cloud Gate 708 validates the JWT (e.g., looks atsignature, expiration, destination/audience, etc.) and issues a localsession cookie for user 710. It acts as a session manager 716 securingweb browser access to protected resources and issuing, updating, andvalidating the local session cookie. It also provides a logout URL forremoval of its local session cookie.

Cloud Gate 702 also acts as an HTTP Basic Auth authenticator, validatingHTTP Basic Auth credentials against IDCS. This behavior is supported inboth session-less and session-based (local session cookie) modes. Noserver-side IDCS session is created in this case.

During programmatic access by REST API clients 708, Cloud Gate 702 mayact as an OAuth2 resource server/filter 720 for an application'sprotected REST APIs 714. It checks for the presence of a request with anauthorization header and an access token. When client 708 (e.g., mobile,web apps, JavaScript, etc.) presents an access token (issued by IDCS) touse with a protected REST API 714, Cloud Gate 702 validates the accesstoken before allowing access to the API (e.g., signature, expiration,audience, etc.). The original access token is passed along unmodified.

Generally, OAuth is used to generate either a client identitypropagation token (e.g., indicating who the client is) or a useridentity propagation token (e.g., indicating who the user is). In theembodiments, the implementation of OAuth in Cloud Gate is based on a JWTwhich defines a format for web tokens, as provided by, e.g., IETF, RFC7519.

When a user logs in, a JWT is issued. The JWT is signed by IDCS andsupports multi-tenant functionality in IDCS. Cloud Gate validates theJWT issued by IDCS to allow for multi-tenant functionality in IDCS.Accordingly, IDCS provides multi-tenancy in the physical structure aswell as in the logical business process that underpins the securitymodel.

Tenancy Types

IDCS specifies three types of tenancies: customer tenancy, clienttenancy, and user tenancy. Customer or resource tenancy specifies whothe customer of IDCS is (i.e., for whom is the work being performed).Client tenancy specifies which client application is trying to accessdata (i.e., what application is doing the work). User tenancy specifieswhich user is using the application to access data (i.e., by whom is thework being performed). For example, when a professional services companyprovides system integration functionality for a warehouse club and usesIDCS for providing identity management for the warehouse club systems,user tenancy corresponds to the professional services company, clienttenancy is the application that is used to provide system integrationfunctionality, and customer tenancy is the warehouse club.

Separation and identification of these three tenancies enablesmulti-tenant functionality in a cloud-based service. Generally, foron-premise software that is installed on a physical machine on-premise,there is no need to specify three different tenancies since a user needsto be physically on the machine to log in. However, in a cloud-basedservice structure, embodiments use tokens to determine who is using whatapplication to access which resources. The three tenancies are codifiedby tokens, enforced by Cloud Gate, and used by the business services inthe middle tier. In one embodiment, an OAuth server generates thetokens. In various embodiments, the tokens may be used in conjunctionwith any security protocol other than OAuth.

Decoupling user, client, and resource tenancies provides substantialbusiness advantages for the users of the services provided by IDCS. Forexample, it allows a service provider that understands the needs of abusiness (e.g., a healthcare business) and their identity managementproblems to buy services provided by IDCS, develop their own backendapplication that consumes the services of IDCS, and provide the backendapplications to the target businesses. Accordingly, the service providermay extend the services of IDCS to provide their desired capabilitiesand offer those to certain target businesses. The service provider doesnot have to build and run software to provide identity services but caninstead extend and customize the services of IDCS to suit the needs ofthe target businesses.

Some known systems only account for a single tenancy which is customertenancy. However, such systems are inadequate when dealing with accessby a combination of users such as customer users, customer's partners,customer's clients, clients themselves, or clients that customer hasdelegated access to. Defining and enforcing multiple tenancies in theembodiments facilitates the identity management functionality over suchvariety of users.

In one embodiment, one entity of IDCS does not belong to multipletenants at the same time; it belongs to only one tenant, and a “tenancy”is where artifacts live. Generally, there are multiple components thatimplement certain functions, and these components can belong to tenantsor they can belong to infrastructure. When infrastructure needs to acton behalf of tenants, it interacts with an entity service on behalf ofthe tenant. In that case, infrastructure itself has its own tenancy andcustomer has its own tenancy. When a request is submitted, there can bemultiple tenancies involved in the request.

For example, a client that belongs to “tenant 1” may execute a requestto get a token for “tenant 2” specifying a user in “tenant 3.” Asanother example, a user living in “tenant 1” may need to perform anaction in an application owned by “tenant 2”. Thus, the user needs to goto the resource namespace of “tenant 2” and request a token forthemselves. Accordingly, delegation of authority is accomplished byidentifying “who” can do “what” to “whom.” As yet another example, afirst user working for a first organization (“tenant 1”) may allow asecond user working for a second organization (“tenant 2”) to haveaccess to a document hosted by a third organization (“tenant 3”).

In one example, a client in “tenant 1” may request an access token for auser in “tenant 2” to access an application in “tenant 3”. The clientmay do so by invoking an OAuth request for the token by going to“http://tenant3/oauth/token”. The client identifies itself as a clientthat lives in “tenant 1” by including a “client assertion” in therequest. The client assertion includes a client ID (e.g., “client 1”)and the client tenancy “tenant 1”. As “client 1” in “tenant 1”, theclient has the right to invoke a request for a token on “tenant 3”, andthe client wants the token for a user in “tenant 2”. Accordingly, a“user assertion” is also passed as part of the same HTTP request. Theaccess token that is generated will be issued in the context of thetarget tenancy which is the application tenancy (“tenant 3”) and willinclude the user tenancy (“tenant 2”).

In one embodiment, in the data tier, each tenant is implemented as aseparate stripe. From a data management perspective, artifacts live in atenant. From a service perspective, a service knows how to work withdifferent tenants, and the multiple tenancies are different dimensionsin the business function of a service. FIG. 8 illustrates an examplesystem 800 implementing multiple tenancies in an embodiment. System 800includes a client 802 that requests a service provided by a microservice804 that understands how to work with data in a database 806. Thedatabase includes multiple tenants 808 and each tenant includes theartifacts of the corresponding tenancy. In one embodiment, microservice804 is an OAuth microservice requested throughhttps://tenant3/oauth/token for getting a token. The function of theOAuth microservice is performed in microservice 804 using data fromdatabase 806 to verify that the request of client 802 is legitimate, andif it is legitimate, use the data from different tenancies 808 toconstruct the token. Accordingly, system 800 is multi-tenant in that itcan work in a cross-tenant environment by not only supporting servicescoming into each tenancy, but also supporting services that can act onbehalf of different tenants.

System 800 is advantageous since microservice 804 is physicallydecoupled from the data in database 806, and by replicating the dataacross locations that are closer to the client, microservice 804 can beprovided as a local service to the clients and system 800 can manage theavailability of the service and provide it globally.

In one embodiment, microservice 804 is stateless, meaning that themachine that runs microservice 804 does not maintain any markerspointing the service to any specific tenants. Instead, a tenancy may bemarked, for example, on the host portion of a URL of a request thatcomes in. That tenancy points to one of tenants 808 in database 806.When supporting a large number of tenants (e.g., millions of tenants),microservice 804 cannot have the same number of connections to database806, but instead uses a connection pool 810 which provides the actualphysical connections to database 806 in the context of a database user.

Generally, connections are built by supplying an underlying driver orprovider with a connection string, which is used to address a specificdatabase or server and to provide instance and user authenticationcredentials (e.g., “Server=sql_box;Database=Common;UserID=uid;Pwd=password;”). Once a connection has been built, it can beopened and closed, and properties (e.g., the command time-out length, ortransaction, if one exists) can be set. The connection string includes aset of key-value pairs, dictated by the data access interface of thedata provider. A connection pool is a cache of database connectionsmaintained so that the connections can be reused when future requests toa database are required. In connection pooling, after a connection iscreated, it is placed in the pool and it is used again so that a newconnection does not have to be established. For example, when thereneeds to be ten connections between microservice 804 and database 808,there will be ten open connections in connection pool 810, all in thecontext of a database user (e.g., in association with a specificdatabase user, e.g., who is the owner of that connection, whosecredentials are being validated, is it a database user, is it a systemcredential, etc.).

The connections in connection pool 810 are created for a system userthat can access anything. Therefore, in order to correctly handleauditing and privileges by microservice 804 processing requests onbehalf of a tenant, the database operation is performed in the contextof a “proxy user” 812 associated with the schema owner assigned to thespecific tenant. This schema owner can access only the tenancy that theschema was created for, and the value of the tenancy is the value of theschema owner. When a request is made for data in database 806,microservice 804 uses the connections in connection pool 810 to providethat data. Accordingly, multi-tenancy is achieved by having stateless,elastic middle tier services process incoming requests in the context of(e.g., in association with) the tenant-specific data store bindingestablished on a per request basis on top of the data connection createdin the context of (e.g., in association with) the data store proxy userassociated with the resource tenancy, and the database can scaleindependently of the services.

The following provides an example functionality for implementing proxyuser 812:

dbOperation = <prepare DB command to execute> dbConnection =getDBConnectionFromPool( ) dbConnection.setProxyUser (resourceTenant)result = dbConnection.executeOperation (dbOperation)In this functionality, microservice 804 sets the “Proxy User” setting onthe connection pulled from connection pool 810 to the “Tenant,” andperforms the database operation in the context of the tenant while usingthe database connection in connection pool 810.

When striping every table to configure different columns in a samedatabase for different tenants, one table may include all tenants' datamixed together. In contrast, one embodiment provides a tenant-drivendata tier. The embodiment does not stripe the same database fordifferent tenants, but instead provides a different physical databaseper tenant. For example, multi-tenancy may be implemented by using apluggable database (e.g., Oracle Database 12c from Oracle Corp.) whereeach tenant is allocated a separate partition. At the data tier, aresource manager processes the request and then asks for the data sourcefor the request (separate from metadata). The embodiment performsruntime switch to a respective data source/store per request. Byisolating each tenant's data from the other tenants, the embodimentprovides improved data security.

In one embodiment, various tokens codify different tenancies. A URLtoken may identify the tenancy of the application that requests aservice. An identity token may codify the identity of a user that is tobe authenticated. An access token may identify multiple tenancies. Forexample, an access token may codify the tenancy that is the target ofsuch access (e.g., an application tenancy) as well as the user tenancyof the user that is given access. A client assertion token may identifya client ID and the client tenancy. A user-assertion token may identifythe user and the user tenancy.

In one embodiment, an identity token includes at least a claim/statementindicating the user tenant name (i.e., where the user lives). A “claim”(as used by one of ordinary skill in the security field) in connectionwith authorization tokens is a statement that one subject makes aboutitself or another subject. The statement can be about a name, identity,key, group, privilege, or capability, for example. Claims are issued bya provider, and they are given one or more values and then packaged insecurity tokens that are issued by an issuer, commonly known as asecurity token service (“STS”).

In one embodiment, an access token includes at least a claim/statementindicating the resource tenant name at the time the request for theaccess token was made (e.g., the customer), a claim indicating the usertenant name, a claim indicating the name of the OAuth client making therequest, and a claim indicating the client tenant name. In oneembodiment, an access token may be implemented according to thefollowing JSON functionality:

{ ... ″ tok_type ″ : ″AT″, ″user_id″ : ″testuser″, ″user_tenantname″ :″<value-of-identity-tenant>″ “tenant” : “<value-of-resource-tenant>”“client_id” : “testclient”, “client_tenantname”:“<value-of-client-tenant>”  ...  }

In one embodiment, a client assertion token includes at least a claimindicating the client tenant name, and a claim indicating the name ofthe OAuth client making the request.

The tokens and/or multiple tenancies described herein may be implementedin any multi-tenant cloud-based service other than IDCS. For example,the tokens and/or multiple tenancies described herein may be implementedin SaaS or Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) services.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a network view 900 of IDCS in oneembodiment. FIG. 9 illustrates network interactions that are performedin one embodiment between application “zones” 904. Applications arebroken into zones based on the required level of protection and theimplementation of connections to various other systems (e.g., SSL zone,no SSL zone, etc.). Some application zones provide services that requireaccess from the inside of IDCS, while some application zones provideservices that require access from the outside of IDCS, and some are openaccess. Accordingly, a respective level of protection is enforced foreach zone.

In the embodiment of FIG. 9, service to service communication isperformed using HTTP requests. In one embodiment, IDCS uses the accesstokens described herein not only to provide services but also to secureaccess to and within IDCS itself. In one embodiment, IDCS microservicesare exposed through RESTful interfaces and secured by the tokensdescribed herein.

In the embodiment of FIG. 9, any one of a variety ofapplications/services 902 may make HTTP calls to IDCS APIs to use IDCSservices. In one embodiment, the HTTP requests of applications/services902 go through an Oracle Public Cloud Load Balancing External Virtual IPaddress (“VIP”) 906 (or other similar technologies), a public cloud webrouting tier 908, and an IDCS Load Balancing Internal VIP appliance 910(or other similar technologies), to be received by IDCS web routing tier912. IDCS web routing tier 912 receives the requests coming in from theoutside or from the inside of IDCS and routes them across either an IDCSplatform services tier 914 or an IDCS infrastructure services tier 916.IDCS platform services tier 914 includes IDCS microservices that areinvoked from the outside of IDCS, such as Open ID Connect, OAuth, SAML,SCIM, etc. IDCS infrastructure services tier 916 includes supportingmicroservices that are invoked from the inside of IDCS to support thefunctionality of other IDCS microservices. Examples of IDCSinfrastructure microservices are UI, SSO, reports, cache, job scheduler,service manager, functionality for making keys, etc. An IDCS cache tier926 supports caching functionality for IDCS platform services tier 914and IDCS infrastructure services tier 916.

By enforcing security both for outside access to IDCS and within IDCS,customers of IDCS can be provided with outstanding security compliancefor the applications they run.

In the embodiment of FIG. 9, other than the data tier 918 whichcommunicates based on Structured Query Language (“SQL”) and the ID storetier 920 that communicates based on LDAP, OAuth protocol is used toprotect the communication among IDCS components (e.g., microservices)within IDCS, and the same tokens that are used for securing access fromthe outside of IDCS are also used for security within IDCS. That is, webrouting tier 912 uses the same tokens and protocols for processing therequests it receives regardless of whether a request is received fromthe outside of IDCS or from the inside of IDCS. Accordingly, IDCSprovides a single consistent security model for protecting the entiresystem, thereby allowing for outstanding security compliance since thefewer security models implemented in a system, the more secure thesystem is.

In the IDCS cloud environment, applications communicate by makingnetwork calls. The network call may be based on an applicable networkprotocol such as HTTP, Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”), UserDatagram Protocol (“UDP”), etc. For example, an application “X” maycommunicate with an application “Y” based on HTTP by exposingapplication “Y” as an HTTP Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). In oneembodiment, “Y” is an IDCS microservice that exposes a number ofresources each corresponding to a capability. When “X” (e.g., anotherIDCS microservice) needs to call “Y”, it constructs a URL that includes“Y” and the resource/capability that needs to be invoked (e.g.,https:/host/Y/resource), and makes a corresponding REST call which goesthrough web routing tier 912 and gets directed to “Y”.

In one embodiment, a caller outside the IDCS may not need to know where“Y” is, but web routing tier 912 needs to know where application “Y” isrunning. In one embodiment, IDCS implements discovery functionality(implemented by an API of OAuth service) to determine where eachapplication is running so that there is no need for the availability ofstatic routing information.

In one embodiment, an enterprise manager (“EM”) 922 provides a “singlepane of glass” that extends on-premise and cloud-based management toIDCS. In one embodiment, a “Chef” server 924 which is a configurationmanagement tool from Chef Software, Inc., provides configurationmanagement functionality for various IDCS tiers. In one embodiment, aservice deployment infrastructure and/or a persistent stored module 928may send OAuth2 HTTP messages to IDCS web routing tier 912 for tenantlifecycle management operations, public cloud lifecycle managementoperations, or other operations. In one embodiment, IDCS infrastructureservices tier 916 may send ID/password HTTP messages to a public cloudnotification service 930 or a public cloud storage service 932.

Cloud Access Control—SSO

One embodiment supports lightweight cloud standards for implementing acloud scale SSO service. Examples of lightweight cloud standards areHTTP, REST, and any standard that provides access through a browser(since a web browser is lightweight). On the contrary, SOAP is anexample of a heavy cloud standard which requires more management,configuration, and tooling to build a client with. The embodiment usesOpen ID Connect semantics for applications to request userauthentication against IDCS. The embodiment uses lightweight HTTPcookie-based user session tracking to track user's active sessions atIDCS without statefull server-side session support. The embodiment usesJWT-based identity tokens for applications to use in mapping anauthenticated identity back to their own local session. The embodimentsupports integration with federated identity management systems, andexposes SAML IDP support for enterprise deployments to request userauthentication against IDCS.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram 1000 of a system architecture view of SSOfunctionality in IDCS in one embodiment. The embodiment enables clientapplications to leverage standards-based web protocols to initiate userauthentication flows. Applications requiring SSO integration with acloud system may be located in enterprise data centers, in remotepartner data centers, or even operated by a customer on-premise. In oneembodiment, different IDCS platform services implement the business ofSSO, such as OpenID Connect for processing login/logout requests fromconnected native applications (i.e., applications utilizing OpenIDConnect to integrate with IDCS); SAML IDP service for processingbrowser-based login/logout requests from connected applications; SAML SPservice for orchestrating user authentication against an external SAMLIDP; and an internal IDCS SSO service for orchestrating end user loginceremony including local or federated login flows, and for managing IDCShost session cookie. Generally, HTTP works either with a form or withouta form. When it works with a form, the form is seen within a browser.When it works without a form, it functions as a client to servercommunication. Both Open ID Connect and SAML require the ability torender a form, which may be accomplished by presence of a browser orvirtually performed by an application that acts as if there is abrowser. In one embodiment, an application client implementing userauthentication/SSO through IDCS needs to be registered in IDCS as anOAuth2 client and needs to obtain client identifier and credentials(e.g., ID/password, ID/certificate, etc.).

The example embodiment of FIG. 10 includes threecomponents/microservices that collectively provide login capabilities,including two platform microservices: OAuth2 1004 and SAML2 1006, andone infrastructure microservice: SSO 1008. In the embodiment of FIG. 10,IDCS provides an “Identity Metasystem” in which SSO services 1008 areprovided over different types of applications, such as browser based webor native applications 1010 requiring 3-legged OAuth flow and acting asan Open ID Connect relaying party (“RP,” an application that outsourcesits user authentication function to an IDP), native applications 1011requiring 2-legged OAuth flow and acting as an OpenID Connect RP, andweb applications 1012 acting as a SAML SP.

Generally, an Identity Metasystem is an interoperable architecture fordigital identity, allowing for employing a collection of digitalidentities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations,and providers. LDAP, SAML, and OAuth are examples of different securitystandards that provide identity capability and can be the basis forbuilding applications, and an Identity Metasystem may be configured toprovide a unified security system over such applications. The LDAPsecurity model specifies a specific mechanism for handling identity, andall passes through the system are to be strictly protected. SAML wasdeveloped to allow one set of applications securely exchange informationwith another set of applications that belong to a different organizationin a different security domain. Since there is no trust between the twoapplications, SAML was developed to allow for one application toauthenticate another application that does not belong to the sameorganization. OAuth provides Open ID Connect that is a lightweightprotocol for performing web based authentication.

In the embodiment of FIG. 10, when an OpenID application 1010 connectsto an Open ID server in IDCS, its “channels” request SSO service.Similarly, when a SAML application 1012 connects to a SAML server inIDCS, its “channels” also request SSO service. In IDCS, a respectivemicroservice (e.g., an OpenID microservice 1004 and a SAML microservice1006) will handle each of the applications, and these microservicesrequest SSO capability from SSO microservice 1008. This architecture canbe expanded to support any number of other security protocols by addinga microservice for each protocol and then using SSO microservice 1008for SSO capability. SSO microservice 1008 issues the sessions (i.e., anSSO cookie 1014 is provided) and is the only system in the architecturethat has the authority to issue a session. An IDCS session is realizedthrough the use of SSO cookie 1014 by browser 1002. Browser 1002 alsouses a local session cookie 1016 to manage its local session.

In one embodiment, for example, within a browser, a user may use a firstapplication based on SAML and get logged in, and later use a secondapplication built with a different protocol such as OAuth. The user isprovided with SSO on the second application within the same browser.Accordingly, the browser is the state or user agent and maintains thecookies.

In one embodiment, SSO microservice 1008 provides login ceremony 1018,ID/password recovery 1020, first time login flow 1022, an authenticationmanager 1024, an HTTP cookie manager 1026, and an event manager 1028.Login ceremony 1018 implements SSO functionality based on customersettings and/or application context, and may be configured according toa local form (i.e., basic Auth), an external SAML IDP, an external OIDCIDP, etc. ID/password recovery 1020 is used to recover a user's IDand/or password. First time login flow 1022 is implemented when a userlogs in for the first time (i.e., an SSO session does not yet exist).Authentication manager 1024 issues authentication tokens upon successfulauthentication. HTTP cookie manager 1026 saves the authentication tokenin an SSO cookie. Event manager 1028 publishes events related to SSOfunctionality.

In one embodiment, interactions between OAuth microservice 1004 and SSOmicroservice 1008 are based on browser redirects so that SSOmicroservice 1008 challenges the user using an HTML form, validatescredentials, and issues a session cookie.

In one embodiment, for example, OAuth microservice 1004 may receive anauthorization request from browser 1002 to authenticate a user of anapplication according to 3-legged OAuth flow. OAuth microservice 1004then acts as an OIDC provider 1030, redirects browser 1002 to SSOmicroservice 1008, and passes along application context. Depending onwhether the user has a valid SSO session or not, SSO microservice 1008either validates the existing session or performs a login ceremony. Uponsuccessful authentication or validation, SSO microservice 1008 returnsauthentication context to OAuth microservice 1004. OAuth microservice1004 then redirects browser 1002 to a callback URL with an authorization(“AZ”) code. Browser 1002 sends the AZ code to OAuth microservice 1004to request the required tokens 1032. Browser 1002 also includes itsclient credentials (obtained when registering in IDCS as an OAuth2client) in the HTTP authorization header. OAuth microservice 1004 inreturn provides the required tokens 1032 to browser 1002. In oneembodiment, tokens 1032 provided to browser 1002 include JW identity andaccess tokens signed by the IDCS OAuth2 server. Further details of thisfunctionality are disclosed below with reference to FIG. 11.

In one embodiment, for example, OAuth microservice 1004 may receive anauthorization request from a native application 1011 to authenticate auser according to a 2-legged OAuth flow. In this case, an authenticationmanager 1034 in OAuth microservice 1004 performs the correspondingauthentication (e.g., based on ID/password received from a client 1011)and a token manager 1036 issues a corresponding access token uponsuccessful authentication.

In one embodiment, for example, SAML microservice 1006 may receive anSSO POST request from a browser to authenticate a user of a webapplication 1012 that acts as a SAML SP. SAML microservice 1006 thenacts as a SAML IDP 1038, redirects browser 1002 to SSO microservice1008, and passes along application context. Depending on whether theuser has a valid SSO session or not, SSO microservice 1008 eithervalidates the existing session or performs a login ceremony. Uponsuccessful authentication or validation, SSO microservice 1008 returnsauthentication context to SAML microservice 1006. SAML microservice thenredirects to the SP with required tokens.

In one embodiment, for example, SAML microservice 1006 may act as a SAMLSP 1040 and go to a remote SAML IDP 1042 (e.g., an active directoryfederation service (“ADFS”)). One embodiment implements the standardSAML/AD flows. In one embodiment, interactions between SAML microservice1006 and SSO microservice 1008 are based on browser redirects so thatSSO microservice 1008 challenges the user using an HTML form, validatescredentials, and issues a session cookie.

In one embodiment, the interactions between a component within IDCS(e.g., 1004, 1006, 1008) and a component outside IDCS (e.g., 1002, 1011,1042) are performed through firewalls 1044.

Login/Logout Flow

FIG. 11 is a message sequence flow 1100 of SSO functionality provided byIDCS in one embodiment. When a user uses a browser 1102 to access aclient 1106 (e.g., a browser-based application or a mobile/nativeapplication), Cloud Gate 1104 acts as an application enforcement pointand enforces a policy defined in a local policy text file. If Cloud Gate1104 detects that the user has no local application session, it requiresthe user to be authenticated. In order to do so, Cloud Gate 1104redirects browser 1102 to OAuth2 microservice 1110 to initiate OpenIDConnect login flow against the OAuth2 microservice 1110 (3-legged AZGrant flow with scopes=“openid profile”).

The request of browser 1102 traverses IDCS routing tier web service 1108and Cloud Gate 1104 and reaches OAuth2 microservice 1110. OAuth2microservice 1110 constructs the application context (i.e., metadatathat describes the application, e.g., identity of the connectingapplication, client ID, configuration, what the application can do,etc.), and redirects browser 1102 to SSO microservice 1112 to log in.

If the user has a valid SSO session, SSO microservice 1112 validates theexisting session without starting a login ceremony. If the user does nothave a valid SSO session (i.e., no session cookie exists), the SSOmicroservice 1112 initiates the user login ceremony in accordance withcustomer's login preferences (e.g., displaying a branded login page). Inorder to do so, the SSO microservice 1112 redirects browser 1102 to alogin application service 1114 implemented in JavaScript. Loginapplication service 1114 provides a login page in browser 1102. Browser1102 sends a REST POST to the SSO microservice 1112 including logincredentials. The SSO microservice 1112 generates an access token andsends it to Cloud Gate 1104 in a REST POST. Cloud Gate 1104 sends theauthentication information to Admin SCIM microservice 1116 to validatethe user's password. Admin SCIM microservice 1116 determines successfulauthentication and sends a corresponding message to SSO microservice1112.

In one embodiment, during the login ceremony, the login page does notdisplay a consent page, as “login” operation requires no furtherconsent. Instead, a privacy policy is stated on the login page,informing the user about certain profile attributes being exposed toapplications. During the login ceremony, the SSO microservice 1112respects customer's IDP preferences, and if configured, redirects to theIDP for authentication against the configured IDP.

Upon successful authentication or validation, SSO microservice 1112redirects browser 1102 back to OAuth2 microservice 1110 with the newlycreated/updated SSO host HTTP cookie (e.g., the cookie that is createdin the context of the host indicated by “HOSTURL”) containing the user'sauthentication token. OAuth2 microservice 1110 returns AZ Code (e.g., anOAuth concept) back to browser 1102 and redirects to Cloud Gate 1104.Browser 1102 sends AZ Code to Cloud Gate 1104, and Cloud Gate 1104 sendsa REST POST to OAuth2 microservice 1110 to request the access token andthe identity token. Both tokens are scoped to OAuth microservice 1110(indicated by the audience token claim). Cloud Gate 1104 receives thetokens from OAuth2 microservice 1110.

Cloud Gate 1104 uses the identity token to map the user's authenticatedidentity to its internal account representation, and it may save thismapping in its own HTTP cookie. Cloud Gate 1104 then redirects browser1102 to client 1106. Browser 1102 then reaches client 1106 and receivesa corresponding response from client 1106. From this point on, browser1102 can access the application (i.e., client 1106) seamlessly for aslong as the application's local cookie is valid. Once the local cookiebecomes invalid, the authentication process is repeated.

Cloud Gate 1104 further uses the access token received in a request toobtain “userinfo” from OAuth2 microservice 1110 or the SCIMmicroservice. The access token is sufficient to access the “userinfo”resource for the attributes allowed by the “profile” scope. It is alsosufficient to access “/me” resources via the SCIM microservice. In oneembodiment, by default, the received access token is only good for userprofile attributes that are allowed under the “profile” scope. Access toother profile attributes is authorized based on additional (optional)scopes submitted in the AZ grant login request issued by Cloud Gate1104.

When the user accesses another OAuth2 integrated connecting application,the same process repeats.

In one embodiment, the SSO integration architecture uses a similarOpenID Connect user authentication flow for browser-based user logouts.In one embodiment, a user with an existing application session accessesCloud Gate 1104 to initiate a logout. Alternatively, the user may haveinitiated the logout on the IDCS side. Cloud Gate 1104 terminates theapplication-specific user session, and initiates OAuth2 OpenID Provider(“OP”) logout request against OAuth2 microservice 1110. OAuth2microservice 1110 redirects to SSO microservice 1112 that kills theuser's host SSO cookie. SSO microservice 1112 initiates a set ofredirects (OAuth2 OP and SAML IDP) against known logout endpoints astracked in user's SSO cookie.

In one embodiment, if Cloud Gate 1104 uses SAML protocol to request userauthentication (e.g., login), a similar process starts between the SAMLmicroservice and SSO microservice 1112.

Cloud Cache

One embodiment provides a service/capability referred to as Cloud Cache.Cloud Cache is provided in IDCS to support communication withapplications that are LDAP based (e.g., email servers, calendar servers,some business applications, etc.) since IDCS does not communicateaccording to LDAP while such applications are configured to communicateonly based on LDAP. Typically, cloud directories are exposed via RESTAPIs and do not communicate according to the LDAP protocol. Generally,managing LDAP connections across corporate firewalls requires specialconfigurations that are difficult to set up and manage.

To support LDAP based applications, Cloud Cache translates LDAPcommunications to a protocol suitable for communication with a cloudsystem. Generally, an LDAP based application uses a database via LDAP.An application may be alternatively configured to use a database via adifferent protocol such as SQL. However, LDAP provides a hierarchicalrepresentation of resources in tree structures, while SQL representsdata as tables and fields. Accordingly, LDAP may be more desirable forsearching functionality, while SQL may be more desirable fortransactional functionality.

In one embodiment, services provided by IDCS may be used in an LDAPbased application to, for example, authenticate a user of theapplications (i.e., an identity service) or enforce a security policyfor the application (i.e., a security service). In one embodiment, theinterface with IDCS is through a firewall and based on HTTP (e.g.,REST). Typically, corporate firewalls do not allow access to internalLDAP communication even if the communication implements Secure SocketsLayer (“SSL”), and do not allow a TCP port to be exposed through thefirewall. However, Cloud Cache translates between LDAP and HTTP to allowLDAP based applications reach services provided by IDCS, and thefirewall will be open for HTTP.

Generally, an LDAP directory may be used in a line of business such asmarketing and development, and defines users, groups, works, etc. In oneexample, a marketing and development business may have differenttargeted customers, and for each customer, may have their ownapplications, users, groups, works, etc. Another example of a line ofbusiness that may run an LDAP cache directory is a wireless serviceprovider. In this case, each call made by a user of the wireless serviceprovider authenticates the user's device against the LDAP directory, andsome of the corresponding information in the LDAP directory may besynchronized with a billing system. In these examples, LDAP providesfunctionality to physically segregate content that is being searched atruntime.

In one example, a wireless service provider may handle its own identitymanagement services for their core business (e.g., regular calls), whileusing services provided by IDCS in support of a short term marketingcampaign. In this case, Cloud Cache “flattens” LDAP when it has a singleset of users and a single set of groups that it runs against the cloud.In one embodiment, any number of Cloud Caches may be implemented inIDCS.

Distributed Data Grid

In one embodiment, the cache cluster in IDCS is implemented based on adistributed data grid, as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Pub. No.2016/0092540, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated byreference. A distributed data grid is a system in which a collection ofcomputer servers work together in one or more clusters to manageinformation and related operations, such as computations, within adistributed or clustered environment. A distributed data grid can beused to manage application objects and data that are shared across theservers. A distributed data grid provides low response time, highthroughput, predictable scalability, continuous availability, andinformation reliability. In particular examples, distributed data grids,such as, e.g., the Oracle Coherence data grid from Oracle Corp., storeinformation in-memory to achieve higher performance, and employredundancy in keeping copies of that information synchronized acrossmultiple servers, thus ensuring resiliency of the system and continuedavailability of the data in the event of failure of a server.

In one embodiment, IDCS implements a distributed data grid such asCoherence so that every microservice can request access to shared cacheobjects without getting blocked. Coherence is a proprietary Java-basedin-memory data grid, designed to have better reliability, scalability,and performance than traditional relational database management systems.Coherence provides a peer to peer (i.e., with no central manager),in-memory, distributed cache.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of a distributed data grid 1200 whichstores data and provides data access to clients 1250 and implementsembodiments of the invention. A “data grid cluster”, or “distributeddata grid”, is a system comprising a plurality of computer servers(e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, and 1220 d) which work together in one ormore clusters (e.g., 1200 a, 1200 b, 1200 c) to store and manageinformation and related operations, such as computations, within adistributed or clustered environment. While distributed data grid 1200is illustrated as comprising four servers 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, 1220d, with five data nodes 1230 a, 1230 b, 1230 c, 1230 d, and 1230 e in acluster 1200 a, the distributed data grid 1200 may comprise any numberof clusters and any number of servers and/or nodes in each cluster. Inan embodiment, distributed data grid 1200 implements the presentinvention.

As illustrated in FIG. 12, a distributed data grid provides data storageand management capabilities by distributing data over a number ofservers (e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, and 1220 d) working together.Each server of the data grid cluster may be a conventional computersystem such as, for example, a “commodity x86” server hardware platformwith one to two processor sockets and two to four CPU cores perprocessor socket. Each server (e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, and 1220 d)is configured with one or more CPUs, Network Interface Cards (“NIC”),and memory including, for example, a minimum of 4 GB of RAM up to 64 GBof RAM or more. Server 1220 a is illustrated as having CPU 1222 a,Memory 1224 a, and NIC 1226 a (these elements are also present but notshown in the other Servers 1220 b, 1220 c, 1220 d). Optionally, eachserver may also be provided with flash memory (e.g., SSD 1228 a) toprovide spillover storage capacity. When provided, the SSD capacity ispreferably ten times the size of the RAM. The servers (e.g., 1220 a,1220 b, 1220 c, 1220 d) in a data grid cluster 1200 a are connectedusing high bandwidth NICs (e.g., PCI-X or PCIe) to a high-performancenetwork switch 1220 (for example, gigabit Ethernet or better).

A cluster 1200 a preferably contains a minimum of four physical serversto avoid the possibility of data loss during a failure, but a typicalinstallation has many more servers. Failover and failback are moreefficient the more servers that are present in each cluster and theimpact of a server failure on a cluster is lessened. To minimizecommunication time between servers, each data grid cluster is ideallyconfined to a single switch 1202 which provides single hop communicationbetween servers. A cluster may thus be limited by the number of ports onthe switch 1202. A typical cluster will therefore include between 4 and96 physical servers.

In most Wide Area Network (“WAN”) configurations of a distributed datagrid 1200, each data center in the WAN has independent, butinterconnected, data grid clusters (e.g., 1200 a, 1200 b, and 1200 c). AWAN may, for example, include many more clusters than shown in FIG. 12.Additionally, by using interconnected but independent clusters (e.g.,1200 a, 1200 b, 1200 c) and/or locating interconnected, but independent,clusters in data centers that are remote from one another, thedistributed data grid can secure data and service to clients 1250against simultaneous loss of all servers in one cluster caused by anatural disaster, fire, flooding, extended power loss, and the like.

One or more nodes (e.g., 1230 a, 1230 b, 1230 c, 1230 d and 1230 e)operate on each server (e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, 1220 d) of acluster 1200 a. In a distributed data grid, the nodes may be, forexample, software applications, virtual machines, or the like, and theservers may comprise an operating system, hypervisor, or the like (notshown) on which the node operates. In an Oracle Coherence data grid,each node is a Java virtual machine (“JVM”). A number of JVMs/nodes maybe provided on each server depending on the CPU processing power andmemory available on the server. JVMs/nodes may be added, started,stopped, and deleted as required by the distributed data grid. JVMs thatrun Oracle Coherence automatically join and cluster when started.JVMs/nodes that join a cluster are called cluster members or clusternodes.

Each client or server includes a bus or other communication mechanismfor communicating information, and a processor coupled to bus forprocessing information. The processor may be any type of general orspecific purpose processor. Each client or server may further include amemory for storing information and instructions to be executed byprocessor. The memory can be comprised of any combination of randomaccess memory (“RAM”), read only memory (“ROM”), static storage such asa magnetic or optical disk, or any other type of computer readablemedia. Each client or server may further include a communication device,such as a network interface card, to provide access to a network.Therefore, a user may interface with each client or server directly, orremotely through a network, or any other method.

Computer readable media may be any available media that can be accessedby processor and includes both volatile and non-volatile media,removable and non-removable media, and communication media.Communication media may include computer readable instructions, datastructures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signalsuch as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism, and includes anyinformation delivery media.

The processor may further be coupled via bus to a display, such as aLiquid Crystal Display (“LCD”). A keyboard and a cursor control device,such as a computer mouse, may be further coupled to bus to enable a userto interface with each client or server.

In one embodiment, the memory stores software modules that providefunctionality when executed by the processor. The modules include anoperating system that provides operating system functionality eachclient or server. The modules may further include a cloud identitymanagement module for providing cloud identity management functionality,and all other functionality disclosed herein.

The clients may access a web service such as a cloud service. The webservice may be implemented on a WebLogic Server from Oracle Corp. in oneembodiment. In other embodiments, other implementations of a web servicecan be used. The web service accesses a database which stores clouddata.

Reference Attributes for Related Stored Objects

Embodiments of IDCS store and manage identity data and need to storeobjects that have references to other objects. Therefore, embodimentsdefine and use a schema that can store such objects. The objectreferences may be stored either in the referee object or in the referredobject depending on each specific scenario. Generally, a schema is a setof attribute definitions describing a resource. The SCIM RFC 7643specifies a mechanism for storing and handling simple references via“$ref”. However, the SCIM referencing functionality is inadequate forhandling use cases with complex resource relationships. Accordingly,embodiments store such references by extending the SCIM specification.The functionality for storing references in embodiments can be used fordifferent types of resources and different levels/complexity ofreferences between objects. It can handle complex scenarios such asself-nesting and associative (chained) relationships between thereferred and the referee. Further, the known SCIM core schema describedin IETF RFC 7643 is adequate for providing a collection of attributedefinitions for a single resource but is not adequate for supportingjoin conditions when joining multiple objects/resources (i.e., joiningtables corresponding to multiple resources). However, embodimentsenhance the SCIM core schema to accommodate joining multipleobjects/resources. In the below, “user” and “group” are used as examplesof resources in embodiments, and the terms “resource” and “object” maybe used interchangeably.

In embodiments, a reference provides a way to link related objects, andeach reference may indicate various types of relationships betweenobjects. Examples of references are simple references, parent-childreferences, and associative/chained references. The SCIM standard allowsfor defining relationships between resources/objects using the“reference” attribute in the SCIM specification RFC 7643. For example,in SCIM 7643, a group resource is given as follows:

{ “schemas”: [“urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:core:2.0:Group”], “id”:“e9e30dba-f08f-4109-8486-d5c6a331660a”, “displayName”: “Tour Guides”,“meta”: { “resourceType”: “Group”, “created”:“2011-08-01T18:29:49.793Z”, “lastModified”: “2011-08-01T20:31:02.315Z”,“location”:“https://example.com/v2/Groups/e9e30dba-f08f-4109-8486-d5c6a331660a” },“members”: [ { “value”: “92b725cd-9465-4e7d-8c16-01f8e146b87a”, “$ref”:“https://example.com/v2/Users/92b725cd-9465-4e7d-8c16-01f8e146b87a”,“type”: “User” } ] }

In the above, the “Tour Guides” Group has an “id” of“e9e30dba-f08f-4109-8486-d5c6a331660a” and the “Alice” User resource hasan “id” of “92b725cd-9465-4e7d-8c16-01f8e146b87a”. The “members”attribute in the Group is a reference attribute to store therelationship between Group and User. Specifically, in “members”, the“type” sub-attribute indicates “User” is the referred object, the“value” sub-attribute provides the particular id of the “Alice” user,and “$ref” provides the location of the user.

However, the reference attribute only supports relationships in aone-way navigation mechanism to navigate from a referee to a referencedobject, e.g., navigating from a “parent” object (referee) to its “child”object (reference). In contrast, embodiments provide referencingfunctionality to navigate from “parent” to “child” as well as from“child” to its “parents”. Further, embodiments store and navigateself-nesting and associative relationships. Embodiments extend the SCIMspecification and define and use “direct”, “indirect”, and “self-nested”relationships and provide functionality to configure “persisted” and“non-persisted” references, as described below.

FIG. 13 is an example block diagram 1300 of relationships between a userresource 1302 (resource X), a first group resource 1304 (resource Y1),and a second group resource 1306 (resource Y2), according to anembodiment. A user can be a member of one or more groups, and each groupcan be a member of one or more other groups. A group has an attributecalled “members” which links it to its constituent users and groups. Auser has an attribute called “groups” which links it to its groups. InFIG. 13, the user resource 1302 is a direct member of the first groupresource 1304, and the first group resource 1304 is a direct member ofthe second group resource 1306. The user resource 1302 is also anindirect member of the second group resource 1306 by virtue of theaforementioned direct relationships.

One embodiment defines a relationship “type” for each of the referencesbetween objects in order to be able to store complex relationshipsbetween objects. The relationship “type” of a reference may be “direct”,“indirect”, or “Self-nested”. In a relationship of type “direct”, thereferenced resource is directly stored in the referenced table. The term“direct” indicates that the referred and the referee objects areconnected “directly”, meaning there is no intermediate link betweenthem. In FIG. 13, the user resource 1302 is a “direct” member of thefirst group resource 1304, and the first group resource 1304 is a“direct” member of the second group resource 1306. In a relationship oftype “indirect”, the referenced resource is stored as an indirectreference due to nesting. For example, a group can have members of typeuser or group, allowing nested groups as members. A user may be a memberof a nested group. In FIG. 13, the user resource 1302 is an “indirect”member of the second group resource 1306. A relationship of type“Self-nested” is exclusively used for defining a self-nestedrelationship among objects. For example, a group can have other groupsas its members. For example, the relation between the first groupresource 1304 and the second group resource 1306 is a “direct”relationship. However, the user resource 1302 is a “direct” member ofthe first group resource 1304 and an “indirect” member of the secondgroup resource 1306. Applying a “Self-nested” query on the second groupresource 1306 will fetch the user resource 1302. That is, the“Self-nested” query fetches “indirect” members of a Group.

After defining the relationship “type” for a reference, embodimentsdefine persistence information (“persistence scope”) for the reference.The following functionality provides example schemas and attributes forusers and groups, where persisted and non-persisted references areimplemented.

“groups” attribute in X(User) resource schema { “name”: “groups”,“description”, “A list of groups that the user belongs to, eitherthrough direct membership, nested groups, or dynamically calculated”,“idcsRefResourceAttributes”: [“Group.members.value”], “mutability”:“readOnly”, “subAttributes”: [ { “name”: “value”, “description”: “Theidentifier of the User's group.”, “idcsRefResourceAttributes”:[Group.id”], “idcsValuePersisted”: false, “mutability”: “readOnly” }, {“name”: “type” “description”: “A label indicating the attribute'sfunction; e.g. ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’.”, “idcsRefResourceAttributes”:[“Group.members type”], “canonicalValues”: [“direct”, “indirect”],“idcsValuePersisted”: false, “mutability”: “readOnly” }, { “name”,“$ref”, “description”: “The URI of the Group resource to which the userbelongs”, “referenceTypes”: [“Group”], “idcsValuePersisted”: false,“mutability”: “readOnly” }, { “name”: “display”, “description”, “A humanreadable name”, “idcsRefResourceAttributes”: [“Group.displayName”],“idcsValuePersisted”: false, “mutability”: “readOnly” }  ] } “members”attribute in Y (Group) resource schema { “name”: “members”,“description”: “Group members”, “mutability”: “readWrite”,“subAttributes”: [  { “name”: “value”, “description”: “ID of the memberof this Group”, “idcsRefResourceAttributes”: [“User.id”, “Group.id”]“idcsTargetAttributeName”: “1_VC_1 ”, “mutability”: “readWrite”  },  {“name”: “type”, “description”: “indicates the type of resource, e.g.,User or Group”, “idcsTargetAttributeName”: “1_VC_2”, “cannonicalValues”:[“User”, “Group”], “mutability”: “readWrite” }, { “name”: “$ref”,“description”: “The URI that corresponds to the member of this Group”,“referenceTypes”: [“User”, “Group”], “idcsValuePersisted”: false,“mutability”: “readOnly” }, { “name”: “display”, “description”, “Memberdisplay name”, “idcsRefResourceAttributes”: [“user.displayName”,“Group.displayName”], “idcsValuePersisted”: false, “mutability”:“readOnly” }  ] }

In the above, “idcsRefResourceAttributes” is an attribute that specifiesthe directly referenced attributes in the referred objects (e.g.,“members.value” sub-attribute refers to id attribute in User or Groupresource). “mutability” indicates is an attribute can be changed(“readOnly” indicating no mutability and “readWrite” indicatingmutability), “idcsValuePersisted” indicates if a reference attribute ispersisted or not, and “canonical Values” under “members.type”sub-attribute indicates that only these resource types are accepted asthe referred objects for this attribute. For persisted referenceattributes, the referrer resource (e.g., a group) houses a reference tothe referred resource (e.g., a user or a group) which is persisted inthe referrer's record in database. For non-persisted referenceattributes, the references from the referrer (e.g., a user) to thereferred objects (e.g., a group) are not persisted in the referrerrecord. For example, in a group, the attribute “members” has itssub-attributes “value” and “type” persisted in database. Thecorresponding table column names are given by “idcsTargetAttributeName”,and “mutability” is set as “readWrite”. Meanwhile, other sub-attributessuch as “displayName” are not persisted (“idcsValuePersisted” is set asfalse and “mutability” is set as “readOnly”) and their value is derivedfrom the referred object's record (e.g., user or group's record). Thereference relationship on the attribute level between referrer andreferred objects are given by “idcsRefResourceAttributes”. As anotherexample, for a user resource, all sub-attributes of the attribute“groups” are marked such that “idcsValuePersisted” is false and“mutability” is “readOnly”, indicating that such references arenon-persisted and their values are to be derived from the referredobjects.

In one embodiment, at the time of server start-up, first an in-memoryrepresentation of the objects called “ResourceTypeInfo” is constructed.This is the stage where the aforementioned “type” and “persistencescope” information defined for the references in the resources areparsed by IDCS and translated into the in-memory object“ResourceTypeInfo” and its descendants. This in-memory object stores theattributes defined in the resource, and also stores the object-to-objectrelationship information described herein. This structure is used tonavigate between referee and referred resources during IDCS run-time.

FIG. 14 is a structural view of the in-memory “ResourceTypeInfo” object1402 that defines/stores several object attributes and theirrelationships, according to an embodiment. FIG. 14 illustrates thehierarchy/composition of ResourceTypeInfo 1402, AttributeInfo 1404,RefInfo 1406, and ReferenceData 1408. Specifically, the“ResourceTypeInfo” object 1402 includes a “List <AttributeInfo>” thatincludes one or more “AttributeInfo” object 1404. Each “AttributeInfo”object 1404 may include an optional “RefInfo” object 1406. The “RefInfo”object 1406 includes a “ReferenceData” object 1408, a“selfnestedReference” object 1420, and a “referenceQueryType” object1422, defined as follows:

Map <String, ReferenceData> boolean selfnestedReference enumreferenceQueryType

The “ReferenceData” object 1408 includes a “parentAttributeInfo” object1410, a “refAttributeInfo” object 1412, a “referenceName” object 1414, a“refType” object 1416, and a “referenceAttributeCanonicalName” object1418, defined as follows:

AttributeInfo parentAttributeInfo AttributeInfo refAttributeInfo StringreferenceName enum refType [value: DIRECT/INDIRECT] StringreferenceAttributeCanonicalName

Each of these objects is defined in further detail as follows. The“ResourceTypeInfo” object 1402 represents the in-memory view of anobject. It contains one or more “AttributeInfo” objects 1404. Each“AttributeInfo” object 1402 represents the in-memory view of anattribute in the object. If the attribute defines a reference, acorresponding “RefInfo” object 1406 is used to house the referenceinformation. The “RefInfo” object 1406 represents the in-memory view ofthe reference structure in a corresponding “AttributeInfo” object 1404.The “RefInfo” object 1406 holds all values defined in the referenceattributes. It is multi-valued and thereby allows a resource to belinked to multiple other resources as “Map<String, ReferenceData>”. Anexample of the “RefInfo” object 1406 is “<Group.members.value,<ReferenceData>>”. The “RefInfo” object 1406 includes “selfNestedReference” 1420 which is a Boolean that indicates if the referreris referring to any resource which has self-reference, and“referenceQueryType” 1422 which is an “enum” that indicates the kind ofquery which needs to be constructed to fetch these resources. The valuesthat “referenceQueryType” 1422 can take are “[direct,indirect,self-nested]”.

The “RefInfo” object 1406 also includes “ReferenceData” 1408 thatrepresents the building block of a reference attribute. As described,with reference to “RefInfo” 1406, there is a “ReferenceData” 1408 foreach value of the multi-valued reference attribute (e.g.,“idcsRefResourceAttribute”: [“Group.members.value”,“AppRole.members.value”]). Each value is parsed into“parentAttributeInfo” 1410 (“AttributeInfo” of the referenced resource'sparent), “refAttributeInfo” 1412 (“AttributeInfo” of the referencedresource), “referenceName” 1414 (name of the referenced attribute), and“refType” 1416 (“enum” with values [direct, indirect]). With referenceto the [direct, indirect] values of enum, “direct” indicates that theresource is persisted directly and hence has a direct relationship,while “indirect” indicates that the resource has an indirectrelationship and is linked via some other reference resource. Forexample, AppRole.members.value can have either “Groups” or “Users”. AUser may be referring to any group and it may either have a directrelationship with a group or an appRole which then has a group as amember. The second case would be an indirect relationship.

Embodiments implement a two-pass loading mechanism during start-up forobject reference linkage. As described, at the time of start-up,embodiments read the resources from the database and build theirrespective in-memory structural representation. Subsequently,embodiments build the object references using a two-pass loadingmechanism. FIG. 15 is an example block diagram of the two-pass mechanismfor building the references between objects in the server initializationphase in one embodiment. In the first pass 1502 the in-memory objectsare built, and in the second pass 1504 the in-memory objects are linked.Specifically, in the first pass 1502 the objects are read from thedatabase and the in-memory “ResourceTypeInfo” object 1506 and“AttributeInfo” object 1508 for each of the resources are built. Thereference information between the objects is not built in the first pass1502. In the second pass 1504 the references (if any) between objectsare parsed. That is, a “RefInfo” object 1510 and “Reference Data” 1512are built, and then linking of objects is constructed between each“Reference Data” 1512 and a corresponding “AttributeInfo” 1508. In oneembodiment, for example, the respective “AttributeInfo” 1508 objectstate is stored (linked) with the “Reference Data” 1512 by setting theobject in the constructor of “Reference Data” 1512 object.

Query Processor for Reference Attributes

In embodiments, IDCS stores identity data and needs to access resourcesthat have references to other resources. As described above, embodimentsextend the SCIM schema to define reference relationships for suchresources. Further, embodiments provide functionality to optimally querysuch resources. The query is determined at run-time by the requestedresource types and their reference relationships. One embodiment breaksdown incoming queries for reference attributes and then structures anoptimal SQL query to be used in a relational database management system(“RDBMS”) in the backend. Embodiments extend the SCIM “filter”functionality to referenced resources. The functionality provided byembodiments for querying references is dynamic and can be used for anylevel of references among objects. It can also handle complex scenariossuch as self-nesting and associative (i.e., chained) relationshipsbetween referred and referee objects. Embodiments may be implemented forany type of resources. However, in the below, example embodiments aredescribed with reference to “User”, “Group”, and “Approle” resources,and “resources” and “objects” are used in an interchangeable manner.

As disclosed, embodiments classify resource relationships as “direct”,“indirect”, or “Self-nested”, for “persisted” and “non-persisted”references. Embodiments of IDCS define and use these types ofrelationships and references. The SCIM RFC 7644 (herein incorporated byreference) defines a standard set of query parameters that can be usedto filter, sort, and paginate data to satisfy a query initiated by aclient of IDCS and return resources. Table 1 provides some example SCIMquery parameters.

TABLE 1 Example SCIM query parameters Query parameter DescriptionExample filter Used for http://idcs.oracle.com/admin/v1/ filtering theUsers?filter=userName eq “Ben” result set searches for all users whoseusername attribute is equal to “ben” sortBy Used forhttp://idcs.oracle.com/admin/v1/ sorting the Users?filter=userName eqsearch “Ben”&sortBy=lastMofiedDate results searches for all users whoseusername attribute is equal to “ben” and sorts the search results bylast Modified date stored for the users. startIndex Indicateshttp://idcs.oracle.com/admin/v1/ the Users?filter=userName eq paginating“Ben”&sortBy=lastMofiedDate&startIndex=10 index count Indicateshttp://idcs.oracle.com/admin/v1/ how many Users?filter=userName eqrecords to “Ben”&sortBy=lastMofiedDate&count=20 fetch

When IDCS needs to process a request for a resource, the request mayhave referenced attributes as a part of the attributes to be fetchedfrom the resource, when the resource is returned as per SCIM RFC 7644.The request may also have filters corresponding to the referencedattributes that are in the resource. Handling the filters on thereferenced resources is non-trivial, especially when these filters areconfigurable in a variety of ways, e.g., when the filter may contain anycombinations of referenced and non-referenced resources, and/or thefilter may use any of the operators defined as per SCIM RFC 7644, and/orthe filters may be “Simple” or “Complex” or “Logical” as per SCIM.

Since IDCS cannot pre-determine the type of requests and the associatedfilters that may be present in a query, the query processor needs to beable to generate the correct and optimal queries for any given scenario.From an implementation perspective, the resources reside in distincttables in the database and thus the tables need to be “joined” in orderto satisfy the query.

Accordingly, embodiments provide a reference query processor configuredfor processing requests for resources that implement the above-describedreference attribute functionality. Embodiments use the in-memorystructure described with reference to FIG. 14 to optimally serve thecomplex client-initiated queries with filters on the referenceattributes. Embodiments provide a reference attribute query builder thatcan handle persisted and non-persisted references and can supportdirect, indirect, and “Self-nested” relationships among references. Thereference attribute query builder supports two types of processing,related to: (a) reference attributes requested from a resource, and (b)filter conditions on the references in the requested resource. Thereference attribute query builder determines and builds the optimalquery at run-time based on requested reference attributes and presentedfilters. Further, since a resource can have references from more thanone resource, the query builder is configured to efficiently query datafrom all these references and merge them.

Some examples of queries and their descriptions for a “User” resourceare as follows:

-   -   Get all groups for a specific user: GET /Users/<user        id>?attributes=groups    -   Get all appRoles for a specific user: GET /Users/<user        id>?attributes=appRoles    -   Get all direct users for a specific group: GET        /Users?filter=groups[value eq “123” and type eq “direct”]    -   Get all indirect users not for a specific group: GET        /Users?filter=groups[not(value eq “123” and type eq “direct”)]    -   Get all direct users for a specific appRole: GET        /Users?filter=appRoles[value eq “123” and type eq “direct”]    -   Get all indirect users not for a specific appRole: GET        /Users?filter=appRoles[not(value eq “123” and type eq “direct”)]

An example of a query and its description for a “Group” resource is asfollows:

-   -   Get all members for a specific group: GET /Groups/<group id>?        attributes=members

An example of a query and its description for an “appRole” resource isas follows:

-   -   Get all members for a specific appRole: GET /AppRoles/<appRole        id>? attributes=members

The reference query builder needs to address two requirements: thereference attributes requested, and the filter conditions. Embodimentsof IDCS use RDBMS to persist the resources. Then, attributes requestedby an IDCS client are translated as part of a SQL “SELECT clause” (astatement returning a “result set” of records from correspondingtables), and filter conditions are translated as a SQL “WHERE clause”(indicating criteria for rows to be retrieved). The query builder usesboth parts to fetch the appropriate “result set” and construct and sendthe response back to the requesting IDCS client. Resource referencerelationships are defined in the resource schema using“idcsRefResourceAttributes”. A two-phase building of the referencestructure is implemented at the time of start-up as described hereinwith reference to FIG. 15.

The reference query builder serves the reference attributes requested bythe IDCS client according to filter conditions contained in the requestsent by the IDCS client, as follows. When an IDCS client sends a requestfor a resource, the request may identify a specific set of attributesthat have to be retrieved. This attributes-to-fetch set is firstprocessed to form the following three sets, based on the metadata ofeach attribute defined in the schema:

-   -   Non-persisted reference attribute set: the attributes whose        values are not stored in the object but are derived from the        referred resource, and have “idcsRefResourceAttributes” with        certain attribute names from the referred resource    -   Persisted reference attribute set: the attributes whose values        are stored in the same object, and have        “idcsRefResourceAttributes” with certain attribute names from        the referred resource    -   Regular (non-reference) attribute set: the attributes that do        not have “idcsRefResourceAttributes” metadata

The three attribute sets are then processed separately to generatequeries to fetch their values from database. For persisted andnon-persisted reference attribute sets, embodiments iterate the sets foreach attribute, divide the use cases based on the direct, indirect, and“self-nested” relationship of the attribute and its referred attribute,and build a particular query to fetch the values of the attribute. FIG.16 provides a schematic hierarchical diagram of different referencequery types 1602 for persisted and non-persisted references, withdirect, indirect, and self-nested relationships among referred objectsand referees, and where simple, complex, and logical filter conditionsare supported, according to an embodiment. Regular non-referenceattribute queries are not illustrated in FIG. 16. Each reference querytype 1602 may be for a persisted reference 1606 or for a non-persistedreference 1604. An example of a persisted reference 1606 is“Groups.members.displayName”. Each persisted reference 1606 may bequeried under simple, complex, or logical filter conditions. Eachnon-persisted reference 1604 may be direct 1608 (type eq “direct”),indirect 1610 (type eq “indirect”), “direct+indirect” 1612 (when type isnot specified), or “self-nested” (type eq “self-nested”) 1613. Anexample of a direct reference 1608 is “Groups->Users”. Each directreference 1608 may be queried under simple, complex, or logical filterconditions. Each “direct+indirect” reference 1612 may also be queriedunder simple, complex, or logical filter conditions. Each indirectreference 1610 may be self-nested 1614 or non-self-nested 1616. Eachdirect reference 1608 may also be self-nested or non-self-nested (notshown in the figure). An example of a self-nested reference 1614 is“Groups->Groups”. An example of a non-self-nested reference 1616 is“appRole->Groups”. Each self-nested reference 1614 may be queried undersimple, complex, or logical filter conditions. Each non-self-nestedreference 1616 may also be queried under simple, complex, or logicalfilter conditions.

The following are examples of requests related to “User”, “Group”, and“AppRole” resources in embodiments that support queries on attributeswith direct, indirect, and self-nested relationships among referredobjects and referees:

-   -   Non-persisted reference attribute requested (e.g.,        User.appRoles, User.groups, Group.appRoles):        -   Example 1: Direct search for non-self-nested reference            attribute: “User.groups” if “Group” only contains “User” as            members        -   Example 2: Self-nested reference attribute: “User.groups” if            “Group” contains both “User” and “Group” as members        -   Example 3: Not self-nested but indirect reference attribute:            “User.appRoles”, “Group.appRoles”    -   Persisted reference attribute requested (e.g., Group.members,        App Role.members)        -   Example: The attribute is persisted because some of its            sub-attributes such as “members.value” and “members.type”            are persisted, but some other sub-attributes such as            “members.display” are not persisted and should be fetched            from the referred resource table

One embodiment provides a query builder for serving filter conditionscontained in a request sent by an IDCS client. FIG. 17 is a schematicdiagram of a filter reference query builder/processor, demonstratingfive stages of building reference queries on filter conditions accordingto an embodiment. Each stage is constructed using the information fromits previous stage as well as auxiliary information derived from thereference attributes described herein with reference to FIG. 14. Thefive stages include a filter condition receiver 1702, a query manager1704, a reference data loader 1706, an expression builder 1708, and areference clause generator 1710.

The filter condition receiver 1702 is the first stage and performstraversal and parsing of the “filter object”. Specifically, when IDCSreceives a client-initiated request for a resource with a filter (as perSCIM), the filter string is parsed and a “filter object” is constructedas a pre-processing step. Table 2 provides an example valid set offilter operators that can be used on a resource attribute in oneembodiment.

TABLE 2 Example valid set of filter operators Binary operators OperatorImplied as Example filter string eq equals username eq “Ben Jensen” cocontains username co “Ben Jensen” sw Starts with Username sw “ben” ewEnds with Username ew “sen” ne Not equals Phone.type ne “home” gtGreater than Count gt “2” ge Greater than or equal to Count ge “2” ltLess than Count lt “2” ge Less than or equal to Count le “2” OperatorImplied as Example Unary operator pr Is Present Username pr Logicaloperator and and Username eq “ben” and phone.type eq “home” or orUsername eq “ben” or username eq “alex” not Not of some some valueNot(username eq “alex”)

The following provides examples for various filter types in embodiments.A simple filter is a filter with any of the binary or unary operatorsused on a resource attribute (there can only be one resource attributein a simple filter), for example:

username eq “Ben Jensen”

Username co “ben”

username pr

A logical filter is a filter made of multiple simple filters used incombination with logical operator, for example:

username sw “ben” or username sw “alex”

username co “test” and displayName co “test”

A complex filter is used on complex attributes such as name, emails,phone in the examples provided in Table 2, according to an embodiment.

TABLE 2 Examples of complex attributes “Name “ : { “emails”:{ “phone”:{“Firstname”: “ben”, “type”: “home”, “type”: “home”, “lastname” :”sen”,“value”:”test@abc.com” “value”:”123-999-9999” “middle } } name” :”jen” }

Each complex attribute has sub-attributes defined, and a filtercondition is applied on the sub-attribute in reference to its parentattribute. For example, as shown in Table 2, “emails” is a complexattribute, also called a parent attribute. “Emails” has twosub-attributes: type and value. In a complex filter, the filtercondition is applied to emails.type or emails.value. Examples of filteron complex attributes are:

name[firstname eq “ben”]

emails[type eq “home” and value co “test”]

When a filter string such as those described above is passed to theIDCS, IDCS APIs parse the string and build the filter object andidentify the filter type as simple/complex/logical, as shown in thebelow example functionality in one embodiment:

Class Filter { enum Operator { EQUALS(“eq”), NOT_EQUALS(“ne”),CONTAINS(“co”), BEGINS_WITH(“sw”), ENDS_WITH(“ew”), GREATER_EQUAL(“ge”),GREATER_THAN(“gt”), LESS_EQUAL(“le”), LESS_THAN(“lt”), IS_PRESENT(“pr”),} private String propertyName; private Operator op; private StringpropertyVal; private Filter left; private Filter right; private booleansimpleFilter; private boolean complexFilter; private booleanfilterOnNonPersistedComplexReferenceAttr; private booleanfilterOnPersistedComplexReferenceAttr; private booleanisPartOfComplexFilter; private boolean isPartOfLogicalFilter; }

The filter object is a tree-like representation of the decomposed filterstring. The filter condition receiver 1702 takes the filter object asits input and parses/traverses it to determine the query type asillustrated in FIG. 16. Specifically, the filter condition receiver 1702parses/traverses the filter object to deduce the following information:

-   -   The attribute on which the filter is applied determines if the        query is for persisted or non-persisted references.    -   If the filter is configured to be applied on “type”, the “value”        of “type” determines if the query is for a direct or an indirect        reference. If the “value” is not specified, then the filter        reference query builder needs to fetch both direct and indirect        resources.    -   An indirect reference can be either self-nested or        non-self-nested.    -   Each filter can be of type simple, logical, or complex, as per        SCIM.    -   Each of the logical filters and simple filters are passed as        inputs to the first stage. For complex filters, the entire        complex filter is treated as a single entity and is passed to        the first stage. That is, when the query manager 1704 processes        the filter object, complex filters are processed in their        entirety for a single query, whereas simple/logical filters are        processed individually. More specifically, after the filter        string is received as input, embodiments parse the string, read        each attribute and operator, and initialize and construct filter        object using the read values. Then, embodiments load attribute        information for each attribute in the filter object, read        attribute information object (to identify if the attribute is a        reference persisted/non-persisted attribute), and set the flags        in filter object.

The second stage is the filter query manager 1704 which is the filterdata pre-processor. Specifically, once the query type is determined inthe first stage, an instance of the query manager 1704 is instantiated,which also holds a reference to the filter object. The query manager1704 is responsible for constructing the resulting SQL query on thefilter at run-time. For each of the filters that need to be processed bythe query manager 1704, corresponding filter reference data is built bythe query manager 1704. Specifically, this pre-processor reads thefilter object and builds an instance of “ReferenceProcessingData”described in further detail below. Every query manager 1704 builds the“ReferenceProcessingData” based on the query type, i.e., direct,indirect, direct/indirect, and persisted. Then, the“ReferenceProcessingData” is loaded at the third stage which is thereference data loader 1706.

“ReferenceProcessingData” uses the “RefInfo” and “ReferenceData” objectswhich are built during server initialization as described herein withreference to FIG. 15. The following functionality is an example “CommonReferenceProcessingData”:

Map<String, FilterData> filterDataMap

Filter rootFilter

CommonDBMapping commonDBMapping

resourcename

In the above, each “FilterData” includes the following functionality:

AttributeInfo filterattributeinfo

Filter filter

List<FilterReferenceData> filterreferenceDatalist

In the above, each “FilterReferenceData” (which refers to reference databuilt during server initialization) includes the followingfunctionality:

ReferenceData referenceData

DataProviderMapping dbMapping

SQLComponents sqlcomponents

In the above, each “SQLComponents” includes the following functionality:

List<String> selectColumns

List<String> whereClauses

String fromClause

String connectByclause

The “Common ReferenceProcessingData” in one embodiment extends to“ReferenceProcessingData” which includes the following functionality:

boolean anyObjectTableAttrPresent

boolean anySubObjectTableAttrPresent

boolean anyFilterOnValueAttr

Map <String, CommonDBMapping> IndirectRefDBMap

More specifically, “Common ReferenceProcessingData” contains thefollowing data required for processing a query:

-   -   Map<String, FilterData> filterDataMap—has one or more filter        objects. For a complex filter there can be more than one.    -   Filter rootFilter—has the instance of the main filter.    -   CommonDBMapping commonDBMapping—has all the required data        provider attributes.    -   String resourceName—has the resource name of the endpoint.        “FilterData” is an object that stores the relevant reference        information pertaining to each of the filter objects in a        filter, and contains the following data:    -   AttributeInfo filterAttributeInfo—all attribute details of the        filter attribute.    -   Filter filter—a simple filter object being evaluated.    -   List<FilterReferenceData> filterReferenceData—list of IDCS        reference attributes. “FilterReferenceData” has the reference to        the “ReferenceData” object for the attribute and contains the        following data:    -   ReferenceData referenceData—has the reference to the        referenceData object.    -   DataProviderMapping dataProviderMapping—has the attributes data        provider mapping used for building queries.    -   SqlComponents sqlcomponents—described below.

“SqlComponents” is the object representation of the query to beconstructed, and contains the following data:

-   -   List<String> selectColumns—has the list of columns which is part        of the “select clause”.    -   List<String> whereClauses—has the list of “where” conditions        used for building the query.    -   String fromClause—has the “from clause” for the query.    -   String connectByclause—has“connectBy clause”(if any).

The fourth stage is the query expression builder 1708. Each of the querymanagers 1704 instantiates a respective query expression builder 1708that uses the “ReferenceProcessingData” and builds the“ReferenceSqlClause”. “ReferenceSqlClause” is the in-memoryrepresentation of a query generated by the expression builder 1708. Eachexpression builder 1708 builds the query for the respective query type(e.g., direct, indirect, direct and indirect, persisted) such as“connect by” clause for self-nested references, nested queries forindirect references, etc.

FIG. 18 is a block diagram of classes in the expression builder 1708 inone embodiment. 1802 is a Java Interface that defines the overallcontract for the expression builder class hierarchy. 1804 is a Javaconcrete class having the logic/implementation for generating thereference query for persisted reference attributes with complex filters.1806 is a Java Abstract Class that defines the abstract implementationfor generating the SQL Groups and JOIN expressions. The connections from1802 to 1804 and 1806 represent “Inheritance” (“is-a” relationship inObject Oriented Design). 1808, 1810, and 1812 are concreteimplementations of 1806. The connections from 1806 to 1808, 1810, and1812 represent “Inheritance” (“is-a” relationship in Object OrientedDesign). 1808 is a Java class that has the implementation for generatingthe SQL Groups and JOIN expressions involving indirect references(INDIRECT_REF) along with a simple, complex, or logical filter. 1810 isa Java class that has the implementation for generating the SQL Groupsand JOIN expressions for direct and indirect references along with asimple, complex, or logical filter. 1812 is a Java class that has theimplementation for generating the SQL Groups and JOIN expressions fordirect references. 1814 is a Java class that has the implementation forgenerating the SQL Groups and JOIN expressions for direct referencesalong with a logical filter. The connection from 1812 to 1814 represents“Inheritance” (“is-a” relationship in Object Oriented Design).

The fifth and last stage is the reference query generator 1710. When themain SQL generator is fully constructed, it invokes the “buildSql( )” on“ReferenceSqlClause” which will bind the query parameters and generatethe “where” clause for the main SQL. Specifically, each query manager1704 builds the query components required for generating the “where”clause for the filter. These where clauses are SQL statements generatedto fetch data from a different table (a reference resource table).Filter conditions are applied on the reference table to fetch relevantresults. “ReferenceSqlClause” exposes method “buildSql” that eventuallycombines all components of the query together to get the final query onthe reference table. “ReferenceSqlClause” contains the following data:

-   -   ReferenceProcessingData—data which is processed and built by the        query manager 1704 after parsing the filter.    -   SqlComponent sqlComponent—has the main query SQL components.    -   SqlComponent outerSqlComponent—has the outer queries if any.    -   Boolean connectByquery—indicates if it is a “connect by” query        or not. When a resource contains hierarchal data, those nested        relationships can be fetched using the SQL's “connect by”        clause. For example, assuming GroupA has members [User1, User2,        GroupB], and GroupB has members [user3, user4], when all users        who belong to GroupA are requested, the result is User1        (direct), User2 (direct), User3 (indirect through GroupB), and        User4 (indirect through GroupB). That is, since GroupB is a        member of GroupA, all its members become members of GroupA        indirectly, and SQL provides functionality to retrieve this data        store from corresponding tables using “connect by” queries.    -   String buildSql( )—returns the complete query after processing        the sqlComponents in the current instance.

FIGS. 19A and 19B are flow diagrams of functionality for storing andusing object relationships and for reference attribute query processingin a multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system in accordance with embodiments.In one embodiment, the functionality of the flow diagrams of FIGS. 19Aand 19B is implemented by software stored in memory or other computerreadable or tangible medium, and executed by a processor. In otherembodiments, the functionality may be performed by hardware (e.g.,through the use of an application specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”),a programmable gate array (“PGA”), a field programmable gate array(“FPGA”), etc.), or any combination of hardware and software.

Referring now to FIG. 19A, a flow diagram is illustrated for an examplemethod for storing and using object relationships in a multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system.

At 1902 a schema is defined for storing related objects, where theschema includes reference attributes indicative of relationships betweenthe related objects in a database, and where the schema defines arelationship type and a persistence scope for each reference attribute.The related objects may include, for example, users, groups, or“AppRoles” configured and/or used by components of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system such as any of the IDCS microservices 614providing cloud-based IAM services to tenants of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system as described herein with reference to FIG. 6.

In one embodiment, a microservice is a self-contained module that cancommunicate with other modules/microservices, and each microservice hasan unnamed universal port that can be contacted by others. In oneembodiment, the microservice is a run-time component/process. In oneembodiment, the microservice is stateless and retrieves data from thedatabase to perform an identity management service. In one embodiment,the database and the microservice are configured to scale independentlyof one another. In one embodiment, the database includes a distributeddata grid. In one embodiment, one or more applications (e.g., anyapplication illustrated at 602 in FIG. 6) implement IAM functionalityprovided by components of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system (e.g.,microservices 614 in FIG. 6).

At 1904 an in-memory representation of the related objects and theirrelationships is constructed based on the schema, where the in-memoryrepresentation indicates the relationship type and the persistence scopefor each reference attribute, and at 1906 the in-memory representationof the related objects is used to perform an IAM service for a client ofthe multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system.

In one embodiment, the relationship type indicates whether acorresponding reference attribute is indicative of a directrelationship, an indirect relationship, or a self-nested relationship,and the persistence scope indicates whether a corresponding referenceattribute is persisted or non-persisted. The direct relationshipindicates that corresponding referrer and referred objects are directlyrelated. The indirect relationship indicates that corresponding referrerand referred objects are connected through at least one other object.The self-nested relationship indicates that corresponding referrer andreferred objects are the same object. A persisted reference attributeindicates that a corresponding referrer object houses a reference to acorresponding referred object and the reference is persisted in adatabase record of the corresponding referrer object. A non-persistedreference attribute indicates that a reference from a correspondingreferrer object to a corresponding referred object is not persisted in adatabase record of the corresponding referrer object.

In one embodiment, constructing the in-memory representation of therelated objects and their relationships is performed during serverstart-up. In one embodiment, a two-pass loading mechanism is implementedduring the server start-up, including, in a first pass, buildingin-memory objects that represent the related objects, and, in a secondpass, linking the in-memory objects based on their relationships.

Referring now to FIG. 19B, a flow diagram of an example method forreference attribute query processing in a multi-tenant cloud-based IAMsystem is provided.

At 1908 a request is received from a client of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system, where the request indicates one or morereference attributes associated with a resource that is persisted in adatabase of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, and the requestindicates one or more filter conditions configured to be applied on theone or more reference attributes. The reference attributes maycorrespond to related objects that include, for example, users, groups,or “AppRoles” configured and/or used by components of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system such as any of the IDCS microservices 614providing cloud-based IAM services to tenants of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system as described herein with reference to FIG. 6.

In one embodiment, a microservice is a self-contained module that cancommunicate with other modules/microservices, and each microservice hasan unnamed universal port that can be contacted by others. In oneembodiment, the microservice is a run-time component/process. In oneembodiment, the microservice is stateless and retrieves data from thedatabase to perform an identity management service. In one embodiment,the database and the microservice are configured to scale independentlyof one another. In one embodiment, the database includes a distributeddata grid. In one embodiment, one or more applications (e.g., anyapplication illustrated at 602 in FIG. 6) implement IAM functionalityprovided by components of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system (e.g.,microservices 614 in FIG. 6).

At 1910 a query is built based on the one or more reference attributesand the one or more filter conditions, and at 1912 resource data isretrieved by executing the query on a database of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system, where the retrieved resource data is associatedwith the one or more reference attributes and satisfies the one or morefilter conditions.

At 1914 the retrieved data is returned to the client of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system.

In one embodiment, the query is a SQL query executed at run-time, andthe database is an RDBMS in the backend of the multi-tenant cloud-basedIAM system.

In one embodiment, the resource includes references from multiple otherresources, and data is queried from all of the multiple other resourcesand then merged into the retrieved resource data.

In one embodiment the resource is stored in the database of themulti-tenant cloud-based IAM system using a schema configured forstoring related objects, where the one or more reference attributes areindicative of relationships between the related objects in the database,and the schema defines a relationship type and a persistence scope foreach reference attribute.

In one embodiment, retrieving the resource data is performed using anin-memory representation of the related objects and their relationships,where the in-memory representation is constructed based on the schema,and the in-memory representation indicates the relationship type and thepersistence scope for each reference attribute. The relationship typeindicates whether a corresponding reference attribute is indicative of adirect relationship, an indirect relationship, or a self-nestedrelationship, and the persistence scope indicates whether acorresponding reference attribute is persisted or non-persisted.

The direct relationship indicates that corresponding referrer andreferred objects are directly related. The indirect relationshipindicates that corresponding referrer and referred objects are connectedthrough at least one other object. The self-nested relationshipindicates that corresponding referrer and referred objects are the sameobject. A persisted reference attribute indicates that a correspondingreferrer object houses a reference to a corresponding referred objectand the reference is persisted in a database record of the correspondingreferrer object. A non-persisted reference attribute indicates that areference from a corresponding referrer object to a correspondingreferred object is not persisted in a database record of thecorresponding referrer object.

In one embodiment, retrieving the resource data includes: constructing afirst set of reference attributes and a second set of referenceattributes, where the first set of reference attributes is a firstsubset of the one or more reference attributes that are indicated aspersisted, where the second set of reference attributes is a secondsubset of the one or more reference attributes that are indicated asnon-persisted; and processing the first set and the second setseparately to retrieve the resource data. In one embodiment, the firstset is processed under an applicable one of simple, complex, or logicalfilter conditions. In one embodiment, the second set is divided intofurther subsets of reference attributes corresponding to relationshiptypes of direct, indirect, self-nested, and non-self-nested, where arespective query is built to separately fetch values of attributesassociated with each of the further subsets under an applicable one ofsimple, complex, or logical filter conditions.

In one embodiment, the in-memory representation of the related objectsand their relationships is constructed during server start-up. In oneembodiment, a two-pass loading mechanism is implemented during theserver start-up, including: in a first pass, building in-memory objectsthat represent the related objects; and in a second pass, linking thein-memory objects based on their relationships.

In one embodiment, the request is received from an application thatimplements IAM functionality provided by components of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system, and the components include one or moremicroservices.

As disclosed, embodiments define and implement reference attributes thatprovide a mechanism to identify associative (direct/indirect)relationships between the referrer and referred objects, includingself-nesting. Embodiments support persisted and non-persistedreferences. Embodiments provide the structural semantics for optimallystoring references. Embodiments disclose the description of referencesfor their types (persisted and non-persisted) and relationship (direct,indirect, and self-nested), as well as how IDCS constructs in-memoryrepresentation of resources. Embodiments can use the schema to processcomplex queries on the reference attributes. The schema and the querymechanism may be implemented/used in any microservice of IDCS forlinking related objects.

Several embodiments are specifically illustrated and/or describedherein. However, it will be appreciated that modifications andvariations of the disclosed embodiments are covered by the aboveteachings and within the purview of the appended claims withoutdeparting from the spirit and intended scope of the invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for reference attribute query processingin a multi-tenant cloud-based identity and access management (IAM)system, the method comprising: receiving a request from a client of themulti-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherein the request indicates oneor more reference attributes associated with a resource that ispersisted in a database of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system,wherein the request indicates one or more filter conditions configuredto be applied on the one or more reference attributes; building a querybased on the one or more reference attributes and the one or more filterconditions; retrieving resource data by executing the query on adatabase of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherein theretrieved resource data is associated with the one or more referenceattributes and satisfies the one or more filter conditions; andreturning the retrieved data to the client of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the query is astructured query language (SQL) query executed at run-time, wherein thedatabase is a relational database management system (“RDBMS”) in thebackend of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system.
 3. The method ofclaim 2, wherein the database comprises a distributed data grid.
 4. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the resource includes references frommultiple other resources, wherein data is queried from all of themultiple other resources and then merged into the retrieved resourcedata.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the resource is stored in thedatabase of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system using a schemaconfigured for storing related objects, wherein the one or morereference attributes are indicative of relationships between the relatedobjects in the database, wherein the schema defines a relationship typeand a persistence scope for each reference attribute.
 6. The method ofclaim 5, wherein the retrieving of the resource data is performed usingan in-memory representation of the related objects and theirrelationships, wherein the in-memory representation is constructed basedon the schema, wherein the in-memory representation indicates therelationship type and the persistence scope for each referenceattribute.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the relationship typeindicates whether a corresponding reference attribute is indicative of adirect relationship, an indirect relationship, or a self-nestedrelationship, wherein the persistence scope indicates whether acorresponding reference attribute is persisted or non-persisted.
 8. Themethod of claim 7, wherein the direct relationship indicates thatcorresponding referrer and referred objects are directly related.
 9. Themethod of claim 7, wherein the indirect relationship indicates thatcorresponding referrer and referred objects are connected through atleast one other object.
 10. The method of claim 7, wherein theself-nested relationship indicates that corresponding referrer andreferred objects are the same object.
 11. The method of claim 7, whereina persisted reference attribute indicates that a corresponding referrerobject houses a reference to a corresponding referred object and thereference is persisted in a database record of the correspondingreferrer object.
 12. The method of claim 7, wherein a non-persistedreference attribute indicates that a reference from a correspondingreferrer object to a corresponding referred object is not persisted in adatabase record of the corresponding referrer object.
 13. The method ofclaim 7, wherein the retrieving of the resource data comprises:constructing a first set of reference attributes and a second set ofreference attributes, wherein the first set of reference attributes is afirst subset of the one or more reference attributes that are indicatedas persisted, wherein the second set of reference attributes is a secondsubset of the one or more reference attributes that are indicated asnon-persisted; and processing the first set and the second setseparately to retrieve the resource data.
 14. The method of claim 13,wherein the first set is processed under an applicable one of simple,complex, or logical filter conditions.
 15. The method of claim 13,wherein the second set is divided into further subsets of referenceattributes corresponding to relationship types of direct, indirect,self-nested, and non-self-nested, wherein a respective query is built toseparately fetch values of attributes associated with each of thefurther subsets under an applicable one of simple, complex, or logicalfilter conditions.
 16. The method of claim 6, wherein the in-memoryrepresentation of the related objects and their relationships isconstructed during server start-up.
 17. The method of claim 16, whereina two-pass loading mechanism is implemented during the server start-up,comprising: in a first pass, building in-memory objects that representthe related objects; and in a second pass, linking the in-memory objectsbased on their relationships.
 18. The method of claim 1, wherein therequest is received from an application that implements IAMfunctionality provided by components of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAMsystem, wherein the components comprise one or more microservices.
 19. Acomputer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, whenexecuted by a processor, cause the processor to perform referenceattribute query processing in a multi-tenant cloud-based identity andaccess management (IAM) system, the performing comprising: receiving arequest from a client of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system,wherein the request indicates one or more reference attributesassociated with a resource that is persisted in a database of themulti-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherein the request indicates oneor more filter conditions configured to be applied on the one or morereference attributes; building a query based on the one or morereference attributes and the one or more filter conditions; retrievingresource data by executing the query on a database of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system, wherein the retrieved resource data isassociated with the one or more reference attributes and satisfies theone or more filter conditions; and returning the retrieved data to theclient of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system.
 20. A systemcomprising: a processor; and a computer-readable medium havinginstructions stored thereon that, when executed by the processor, causethe processor to perform reference attribute query processing in amulti-tenant cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) system,the performing comprising: receiving a request from a client of themulti-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherein the request indicates oneor more reference attributes associated with a resource that ispersisted in a database of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system,wherein the request indicates one or more filter conditions configuredto be applied on the one or more reference attributes; building a querybased on the one or more reference attributes and the one or more filterconditions; retrieving resource data by executing the query on adatabase of the multi-tenant cloud-based IAM system, wherein theretrieved resource data is associated with the one or more referenceattributes and satisfies the one or more filter conditions; andreturning the retrieved data to the client of the multi-tenantcloud-based IAM system.